


Our Lives As Happenstance

by MilenaDaniels



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Canon amputation, F/M, Family, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:25:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilenaDaniels/pseuds/MilenaDaniels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A divergence in the lives of our team from one of the last scenes of the movie causes their future to change radically and permanently. </p>
<p>Lots of Daniel/Vala mild Cam/Sam and HUGE spoilers for Continuum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Divine Intervention

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted at Fanfiction.net and Livejournal on July 9, 2008 and completed November 27, 2009.

Daniel feebly clutched the gaping hole in his chest, knowing it wouldn't help stifle the bleeding but able to do little else as life quickly escaped him. From his vantage point on the floor, his view consisted of the towering heights of the temporal chamber and the beautiful representation of the universe spiraling above him. He could still hear the muted sounds of the firefight around him, muted as he lost his senses one by one. He'd been through this so many times, his life didn't rush past his eyes, his regrets didn't assault him one last time. Instead, as he lay prone on the hard floor, his warm blood pooling beneath him, he had only one thought, only one unfulfilled desire. His mind forced itself to conjure up the picture of the one person with whom he hadn't been reunited in this god forsaken timeline. He had no pictures of her but he remembered the raven black colour of her hair, her pale skin, her eyes that seemed resolute to not being labelled a single colour but always held a hint of mischief and a healthy measure of warmth.

As his vision blurred and the edges of his periphery darkened, the noise of the fight seemed to slip away and his mental image was interrupted by a new vision of her. He'd never seen her with this elaborate hairstyle or clothing but, as he took his last breath, he realized it wasn't worth questioning. Then darkness came and the pain left.

* * *

Qetesh surveyed her Jaffas' handiwork with disdain. She had ringed down to find three patrols dead at her feet and three of their opponents, including the nuisance of a First Prime, still breathing. As soon as they had spotted her, Teal'c moved to fire at her but the two humans froze before her as if surprised. Honestly she was almost as surprised to see two such lowly creatures in this place. She easily took care of the Jaffa with a blast from her hand device that sent him flying into the side of the chappa'ai. It was a shame he didn't just fall off the ledge but this meant she had more time to decide whether to torture him to death or re-indoctrinate him into her service. He was loyal to the core, after all. Her attack on the First Prime roused the other human man into action but he didn't have the time to raise his weapon before she gave him the same treatment. With both opponents down, her gaze landed on the human woman feverishly working at the console.

"Stop." Qetesh ordered her. Her voice was soft but firm and the woman heeded the call. Her back was turned to the goddess and that simply would not do.

"Turn, human." She ordered again. The woman obeyed. Good. "Jaffa, kree."

At once, the Jaffa at her sides sprung into action to secure her prisoners for execution. Qetesh walked slowly to the other platform, side-stepping another human man still in the throes of approaching death. The blonde woman didn't struggle against the Jaffas' grasp, she was obviously seasoned to such treatments. Qetesh's gaze swept the console and rose higher to see the universe above them, trying to make sense of this failsafe machine her dear husband had kept so hidden.

"My queen." One of her Jaffa called to her respectfully. She tore her attention away from the light spectacle to see the woman, the man, and the First Prime kneeling before her, the latter two having been awoken for her. She spared them a moment of reflection before waving her hand.

"Kill them."

"Wait!" The woman cried as the staff weapons were activated. "We know what this is, how it works!"

Qetesh raised her hand once more and let a smirk take over her lips. She knelt down beside the woman and gently wrapped her fingers around her chin.

"You presume,  _human_ , that I don't?" She patronized gently, delighting in how her metallic voice caused her prey to shudder slightly. She was lying of course, she didn't quite know what this place was but she could guess. Qetesh straightened herself and turned away when the man's voice called out to her.

"You might know what this is but you probably don't know that we're from Ba'al's timeline." He said, trying to convince her to spare his life.

Qetesh paused as the pieces of the puzzle fit into place. From Ba'al's timeline... Which meant they weren't from this one. That's how Ba'al knew everyone's move, how he knew how to defeat her at Selenis, how to get the Jaffa to join his cause, how to find Earth and contact them. Qetesh looked up to examine the holographic universe and saw the thousands of stars...and their solar flares. This was a temporal device.

"Ba'al came from your timeline." She echoed. Both humans nodded. "And you know this how?"

"Because we entered a wormhole back to Earth just as he effectuated the time displacement. The difference is that he went from this station to the past and we went through a stargate to Earth as it happened so we were saved from the changes." She explained.

Qetesh narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.

"And in your timeline, you obviously have had much interaction with the Goa'uld, and Ba'al, perhaps even myself." She posited.

The blonde looked uncertain as to how much to reveal, even after the man encouraged her but the activation of her hand device prompted her into speaking.

"Yes, we had a program in our timeline that allowed us to travel through the stargate. It had been running for over ten years when we were brought here. The Goa'uld were the first hostile aliens we encountered." She said. "Ba'al was...a recurring problem for us."

"Hm." Qetesh said dismissively though her mind worked through all the possibilities. Ba'al was dead but these creatures knew things that could work to her advantage.

"Congratulations." She told them softly, almost convincingly caring. "You've won yourselves some time. Jaffa, kree!"

The Jaffa pinning them to the floor now forced them to their feet and led them forcefully to the ring platform.

"Wait!" The man yelled again and Qetesh breathed deeply in annoyance. She pinned the insolent human with a glare but it didn't make him cower.

"This man," he said, pointing the the human she'd stepped over, "he's a historian. He knows more than either of us do. If you save him he could be useful to you."

Qetesh cocked her head to the side and looked down to the dying man.

"In essence, you're telling me I can just kill you two and keep him." She pointed out maliciously. Fear crossed both their eyes but they stayed silent. She flicked her wrist again and the Jaffa resumed dragging their prisoners to the rings.

"And what shall I do with you?" She asked the still-kneeling First Prime before her once the humans were gone.

"You would do well to kill me before I have a chance to kill you." He threatened her angrily. Qetesh dropped a gentle hand on his head and dug her nails painfully into his scalp.

"And you would do well not to make promises you cannot keep." She replied silkily. She retracted her nails, ignoring the blood coating the tips and motioned her Jaffa to take him away as well.

Once the room was devoid of her enemies, Qetesh took a moment to reflect on the fate of this place. On the one hand, she could keep it and alter history to her own advantage...but on the other hand, Ba'al had already done the grunt work for her. He'd built an empire that she was now in control of and led her to the people who were numerous enough to pose a challenge, the Tau'ri, who were now all but extinct. The only people who stood in her way were the small factions of Tok'ra that would be easily taken care of. Yes, these were good times. And this device was a threat against her, especially since the other Goa'uld knew she had sped off toward it and would be wondering what it held.

Her mind made up, Qetesh and her last two Jaffa followed her faithfully as she made her way back to the ring platform. The wounded human still lay awkwardly on the floor, his blood causing an inconvenient stain on the floor to jump over. The others were no doubt lying about his knowledge to save his life but as she looked down at him, she could see his cloudy eyes focus on her and a weak smile graced his lips. Interesting reaction upon seeing the god who took one's friends prisoner.

Qetesh made quick work of using the healing device on his wound, then walked away from the unconscious man and into the rings.

"Bring him to the ship with the others then place charges on every combustible surface. I want this structure to be unsalvageable." She ordered as the rings descended to whisk her back to her flagship.

"Yes, my queen."

 


	2. Another Incarceration

"Do you think she saved him?" Sam asked quietly in the surprisingly well lit brig.

"Sure she did." Cam replied from the other bench.

"She killed Ba'al." She pointed out. If she did that to her own husband...

"Yeah, but that was before she knew he was from another timeline and could have valuable information for her." Cam returned more confidently this time.

Sam stayed silent.

"I remember seeing Sha're and Skaa'ra as Goa'ulds," she said, "how they looked so different just by their eyes. But even then I thought I could see a part of them. It was probably just wishful thinking but...I don't see that in Qetesh."

It was Cam's turn to stay silent. Seeing a goddess in Vala's body attack them at Praxion had been a shock to his system. For over a year he'd hoped that the timeline had altered in such a way that she had been saved from being a host entirely. Instead it seemed she had been taken but this time around, no Tok'ra had come to save her.

"She's in there somewhere." Cam decided on the spot, if only for the sake of their morale.

"And we didn't fail anyone." He spoke again quietly. Sam's head shot up from its position on her knees in shock. How had he known what she was thinking?

"We didn't fail Earth, they didn't give us a chance to save them." He elaborated, turning his head to make sure she was paying attention.

"We could have tried harder." She retorted, her throat closing as she thought of how she'd given up any aspirations at a life involved with the Stargate at the government's insistence. Who knows what she could have accomplished in a year? Maybe their entire planet wouldn't be dead now. Innocent billions dead, shot from space. There was nowhere they could have run.

"We can try now." Cam assured her, unfolding his crossed legs to move to her bench. Sam looked up and shifted to the side to make room for him.

"Earth is...gone." He admitted with difficulty. "But there are other people out there we can help. What we need to do is find a way out of here and meet up with the Jaffa Rebellion in this timeline, and the Tok'ra. We join a movement and we kill these snakes like we...or you...did in our timeline."

Sam couldn't help but smile. He made it seem so easy.

"Is there anything that can get you down?" She asked him. They both looked over to the second bench on which Daniel should have been resting and she had her answer.

* * *

He woke up slowly, languidly, and completely refreshed. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten such a great night's sleep. His body was comfortable, his mind was cobweb-free and the fingers running through his hair was...

Daniel's eyes snapped open and he sat up quickly to find a woman smirking beside him.

"Vala!" He exclaimed in shock and joy but the woman narrowed her eyes curiously.

"How is it you know that name, human?" Her metallic voice questioned him firmly. That's when Daniel took stock of his surrounding. He was sitting in a sarcophagus in an ornate room of gold and red design.

"I'm in a mothership." He said aloud, inadvertently ignoring her question.

"You are." The Goa'uld affirmed peculiarly. "You've been in one before?"

Daniel's eyes landed on the familiar features of the woman he hadn't seen in over a year and he finally allowed his denial to break down as a lead weight settled in his chest.

"You're Qetesh." He stated morosely.

The Goa'uld smiled sweetly and placed a soft hand on his cheek as she leaned in closely.

"I am." She said quietly before raking her nails down, drawing blood. "And you would do well to answer your God's questions or I might just take that leg back, slowly."

Glossing over her threat, Daniel's eyebrows furrowed as he tried to understand her threat. Qetesh understood his confusion and took back her hand, wiping the blood off on his shirt before leaving his side. In her absence, Daniel's hands hovered over his left pant leg that looked amazingly full. Without touching whatever was inside it, he slowly pulled up his pant leg and his eyes widened as they took in hairs and skin. He quickly yanked up the rest of the pant leg to his knee and finally touched the limb under his hands in awe. He slowly flexed his foot at the ankle and wiggled his toes in his boot.

"How...?" He choked out, looking up to find Qetesh. The goddess accepted a glass of beverage from her slave and slowly made her way back to inspect the sarcophagus's work.

"You know of motherships and Goa'uld but not of sarcophagi?" Her metallic voice lilted curiously.

"I'm familiar with sarcophagi," Daniel retorted irritably, "but I've never seen one regrow an entire limb."

"You don't seem surprised to be alive," she pointed out, "how do you suppose the sarcophagus recreated the organs the staff blast had partially destroyed?"

Daniel searched his memory to remember what she was talking about. The fight at Praxion, he'd been shot! And then he'd seen...Qetesh. His hands felt his chest and found it solid as usual.

"You saved me, and my leg." Daniel realized, frowning at her. "Why?"

Qetesh took a sip from her chalice, her eyes staying trained on him over the rim, as she contemplated her answer.

"I did nothing for your leg. My Jaffa put you in the sarcophagus to heal the staff wound, and it healed the rest of you. As for your life, well, your friends made quite a plea for it. I was quite moved." She mocked him. The human seemed to ignore this as well as his eyes widened.

"Cam and Sam!" Daniel blurted, suddenly realizing they were missing. "What did you do with them?"

Qetesh let him suffer the silence for a while longer as she called her slave over to take her cup again. She could hear him stumbling out of the sarcophagus behind her but she was confident her Jaffa would shoot him before he could attack her. When she heard nothing, she turned around and saw him standing next to the regeneration device simply looking at her.

"They are in my possession, human, as you are." She informed him authoritatively as she walked back towards him. Her walk was confident and intimidating but he didn't waiver in his solid stance. She got close enough to see every shade of blue in his eyes and stared him down until he broke eye contact. Then she chose to circle him slowly.

"Your... _friends_...tell me you possess as much if not more knowledge about this galaxy than my dear former husband. Is this true?" She asked with a tone that told him it had better be. Daniel focused on not gulping in front of her, waiting until she was at his back to do it.

"Uhh, well I don't have  _his_  knowledge, of course. We didn't share a mind at any point in time. But I do know a lot about the galaxy, especially about different cultures on different planets." He admitted. He'd die before he'd sell anyone out but he needed to buy some time to get to the others and get the hell out of here. "I'm a-a linguist and archeologist, I study...um...artifacts, histories, cultures."

"Good answer." She cooed at him as if congratulating a small child.

He could feel Qetesh's hand sliding onto his shoulder and he closed his eyes. It might feel like Vala but it wasn't. He didn't give himself any time to come to grips with seeing Vala's body be host to this parasite, he needed to stay focused on getting out of here alive.

Qetesh regarded his expression questioningly, it looked as though her touch pained him. It was impossible for him to have known her host, she would know it. But he was from an alternate timeline, it was possible that they'd met in his. She'd have to explore that later.

"My queen..." One of her Jaffa called from the doorway, adopting a pose of servitude.

"What is it?" Qetesh asked, still perusing the human's face now that his eyes had opened again.

"Cronos hails you." He replied simply. Qetesh waved him off and he left the room quickly.

"You will be taken to  _suitable_  accommodations and you will take the time to remember any and all information that I could possibly need." Qetesh informed the man before her, all traces of congeniality lost in her altered voice.

Daniel nodded jerkily and felt a small measure of relief when she moved away from him. A Jaffa came forward to lead him to his new quarters but before they could make two steps of progress, Qetesh stopped in the doorway.

"Oh, and human," she called saccharinely. Daniel and his guard watched her as she pulled the saber at her hip out of its sheath and brought it down over the golden cupboards near the door. The blade met no resistance and slide through the solid metal as easily as if it were water. Qetesh watched the cupboard slowly fall apart and resheathed her weapon before looking back at him. "I wasn't kidding about the leg."

With her message received, Qetesh left the room and the guard at Daniel's back pushed him forward on shaky legs.

* * *

"Daniel!" Sam cried as the footsteps approaching their cell revealed a familiar sight.

"Guys!" Daniel returned, relieved to see Qetesh hadn't been lying. He moved toward the bars that kept his friends in the cell but the guard had different ideas. He pulled on Daniel's arm so hard he thought it would fall out off, then he shoved his prisoner into the adjacent cell before locking the bars and leaving. The walls between the cells were thick but the rooms themselves were on an angle so they could still see each other.

"You okay?" Cam asked, wrapping his hand around the bars of his and Sam's cell.

"Um...yeah." Daniel replied slowly, taking in his new temporary home. "Better than okay actually."

Sam and Cam looked at him questioningly and he lifted his pant leg to reveal his newly grown limb.

"Oh my god." Sam exclaimed, her jaw dropping.

"Holy...wow. I did  _not_  know that was possible." Cam added.

"Yeah, neither did I but there you go." Daniel replied, letting his pant leg slide back down. "Are you guys okay?"

"Yeah, she didn't do anything to us...yet." Cam replied darkly.

"She, Qetesh." Daniel echoed needlessly, finally having the time to consider the situation.

"Yeah." Sam agreed sadly. "We were pretty shocked to see her ring down too. I mean, I kind of assumed that's what had happened to her but to actually see Vala-"

"What about Teal'c?" Daniel cut her off, not wanting to think about it. "What happened to him?"

"We don't know." Cam replied, pursing his lips in frustration. "We know she brought him back up to the ship so he's not dead at least."

"She'll make him her First Prime." Daniel predicted sullenly, his eyes looking out into empty space.

"He didn't seem to like her much last time I saw him." Cam returned doubtfully.

"She can brainwash him." Sam said from beside him. "Apophis did it once to convince Teal'c he was still loyal to him."

Cam nodded his understanding and they stood at the bars of their cells in silence for long moments just thinking about what was happening. Daniel broke the quiet with a sigh before pushing himself off the bars and sitting down on the nearest bunk.

"Have you guys thought up our escape plan yet?" He asked his friends with a wry grin.

"We're working on it." Cam assured him with false confidence as he and Sam sat back down as well.

"Good," Daniel replied as he leaned his head back against the wall, "'cause Qetesh is expecting me to come up with a list of people she can attack and how to do it."

"Well...we'll have something before that for sure." Cam nodded and looked over to the skeptic astrophysicist at his side. "We will."

Sam was doubtful for a good reason. They hadn't spent their incarceration thus far just twiddling their thumbs. After inspecting every inch of their cell, they had concluded that the only way they were getting out would be by overpowering the guards if and when they should come for them. But now that they were separated into different cells their problem had just gotten much bigger.

 


	3. Untimely Demise

Qetesh left the humans to stew in their cells for a few days but they never quite left her mind. They would be her advantage over the former system lords and would help her bring the galaxy to its knees before her, but first she had to assert her power in brute strength. Cronos had accepted her reign with a smirk of understanding, Yu paused a moment but as he watched Camulus's severed head roll past him after  _his_  long pause, he accepted her leadership without problem. Nirrti accepted readily as well but Qetesh could practically feel her defiance, she would have to be watched closely. The Jaffa were tricky as well, but she saw no problem in letting them believe the agreement was still in place with... _modified_  clauses. Especially since Teal'c had come around to her side and was now acting as her loyal First Prime.

Now that matters of allegiance were out of the way, Qetesh was once again faced with her very bright future. But she needed information to proceed. When she arrived before her prisoners' cells, she noted that two were asleep, one was awake. Upon seeing her, the human who'd been keeping guard nudged the woman awake and called out to rouse "Jackson."

"Oh, look how this one strives to please its God." Qetesh derided him to her Jaffa bodyguards. The human had been effective in waking his companions and now all three stood before her in their small prisons.

"Which one of you will make your God happy, today?" She asked them. They shared a look she knew well, they wanted to stall her. She sighed and unsheathed her sword, holding it lightly in one hand.

"Let me rephrase that," she started as she flicked her wrist to motion her Jaffa to get the woman out, "which one of you will talk before the others bleed out?"

"Sam!" Daniel cried as the Jaffa manhandled her out of the cell and onto her knees before Qetesh. Cam fought them but they beat him back. Qetesh held the sword to Sam's throat and looked at him expectantly.

"You can't kill her!" Daniel pleaded. "She-she's a-a scientist, she knows technology that is far,  _far_  beyond anything you've seen, trust me!"

Qetesh rolled her eyes impatiently. This human  _had_  been the one figuring out the console at Praxion...

"Very well." She agreed smoothly, resheathing her sword. The humans allowed themselves a moment of relief which dissipated quickly when she activated her hand device. Without hesitation, Qetesh lifted it over the woman's head and reveled in her tortured moans and whimpers. The lack of screaming was disappointing but she wasn't putting all of her energy into it yet.

"Whenever you're ready." Qetesh reminded the other two calmly as they looked on furiously. Moments ticked by and she increased the power she sent through the device, finally causing the woman to scream out.

"Stop!" Cam inadvertently yelled, his knuckles turning white with the force of his grips on the bars.

"You have something to share, human?" She asked with disdain, she had just started enjoying herself before he interrupted her. The man stayed quiet and she stopped the device and took out her sword once more.

"You know what?" Qetesh asked them, knowing they already knew. "I have a sarcophagus."

She brought the sword down quickly but was interrupted again.

"Vala! No!" Daniel yelled as a last ditch effort to get her attention. And it worked; Qetesh had the same stunned expression as she had when he'd first called her by her host's name. Leaving Sam's side, Qetesh moved slowly towards him, looking him up and down with a calculating eye.

"That's the second time you've called me that,  _human_. This time, avoidance isn't an option." She threatened him quietly, moving the tip of her sword just inches above his new leg.

"Daniel." He replied, moving his eyes from the weapon to her face. "My name is Daniel Jackson. The woman you were torturing is Samantha Carter and he's Cameron Mitchell."

"You know it's funny but I'm not fascinated yet." She growled, nipping his pants and the first layer of his skin.

"We knew your host!" Cam yelled from his cell. Qetesh glared at him.

"My host has no recollection of ever meeting any of you." She informed them nonchalantly.

"Well we remember her!" Daniel returned forcefully, forgetting the point of this exchange as he became overwhelmed with the feelings he'd been ignoring for the past year. "I remember the face you stole! I remember the voice you're hiding. I remember she liked her hair loose or in pigtails, not this fancy thing you've got going on. I remember her bastard of a father Jacek who didn't deserve her. I remember her favourite colour, her favourite song, her favourite movie. I remember that the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world was to belong and she did! With us. I remember her and I won't let you forget it, not until I rip you out of her head."

Qetesh was visibly taken aback by his heated speech but she recovered quickly. She painted a small smile on her face though her eyes remained angry, and she slowly removed the blade from its proximity to his leg.

"Alright," she said quietly, placidly, all the while keeping his gaze, "we'll try again tomorrow."

Then she turned, her steps even and determined as she approached Sam and rammed the sword through her chest.

"No!" Daniel and Cam both screamed. Sam watched with confused eyes as Qetesh removed the blood-stained metal from her chest. She blinked twice, trying to clear her mind from the fog the hand device had shrouded it in, before tilting to the side and sprawling to the floor.

"Maybe then you'll be more talkative." Qetesh continued, returning her sword to its scabbard and leaving the room with her Jaffa.

"Carter!? Sam! Can you heard me?" Cam yelled through his bars, reaching his arm out, desperately trying to get a hold on her. Sam lay on the floor, trying desperately to breathe but choking on her blood. Daniel was the floor of his cell like Cam but much too far to attempt anything.

"Sam! Reach out, grab my hand!" Cam ordered her. She was going fast but she heard the order. She only had to move her arm a few inches back before Cam latched on and tugged her roughly to him.

"Alright, I gotcha." Cam said gently as he propped her up slightly against the bars, his arm circling her waist, his hand stroking her hair.

"Sam," Daniel choked, "I'm so sorry." There was nothing else to say.

"Hey, it's okay, it's okay." Cam repeated quietly into her hair and she made a gurgling sound. It didn't take long before she stopped moving in his arms but he didn't let her go. Cam held on to Sam's body through the bars for almost an hour before Qetesh's henchmen came to get her. And even then, he didn't relinquish his teammate easily.

"They're gonna put her in the sarcophagus." Daniel told him unnecessarily as she was taken away.

"And then we start the rodeo again?" His teammate asked gruffly as he looked down at his bloodstained clothing. Daniel didn't answer, he didn't have to. He just sat on the floor in the corner of his cell as he had for the past hour, trying not to let the guilt consume him.

"Cam," Daniel finally said, "I'm sorry."

Cam stayed silent for a while before answering sullenly.

"They'll put her in the sarcophagus." He repeated meaningfully. Daniel understood. Everything would be forgiven if she came back.

* * *

She woke up suddenly, panicked and alert. The hissing of the sarcophagus doors reached her ears as they kept opening to their widest point. Instinctively, a hand rose to her chest even though she knew the skin would be unmarred.

"Get up." A menacing voice ordered. Sam's head swiveled quickly to the side to view her opponents.

"Teal'c!" She exclaimed, not able to keep the small measure of happiness out of her voice. The First Prime did not return her small extension of friendship, instead he answered her with his usual stoic glower. "Or should I say, First Prime of Qetesh? So much for loyalties." She amended sourly.

"How do you know me?" Teal'c demanded as he approached her with his staff weapon.

"You know what?" Sam retorted, getting out of the sarcophagus. "I'm getting tired of going through this with you." The First Prime's glare deepened at her tone but she wasn't done. "I think I'm going to make a video of all of us together and just carry it around on all our missions."

She was now outside of the sarcophagus and pacing, her temper and frustrations reaching a boil as she finally allowed herself to let loose.

"I'm Samantha Carter, you're Teal'c of Chulak. I know that, just like I know about your mentor Brayt'ac, your wife Drey'auc, and your son Rya'c. We're friends, we're colleagues, we fought together against the Goa'uld until Ba'al screwed us over by going back in time and changing things to suit his needs. He made you his First Prime. Then he took Vala as Qetesh's host and his new bride killed him. You told us that earlier, when you wanted to  _kill_ Qetesh, remember that?" Sam didn't even pause to let him answer. "Of course not, you know why? Because she captured us all and brainwashed you into being her slave. Everything you think you know is a lie, sorry."

By this point, Sam realized she'd been pacing the room during her tirade and came to an abrupt halt...right in front of the man she'd been yelling at. Her frustrations and anger were still burning but her fear was starting to creep in as well.

"Are you done,  _human_?" He growled at her. Sam squared her jaw and forced herself not to break eye contact.

"Until I get my second wind." She retorted.

"Good, your screeching was becoming a nuisance." He smoldered before walking to the edge of the room, leaving her standing there confused until she saw the wall of weaponry.

"I'm so sorry." She deadpanned, knowing she was probably pushing her luck now.

Her Jaffa captor ignored her insolence and took down a Zat gun.

"Do you know how to use this?" He barked at her from the wall. "The other Jaffa will not be harmed by a single shot."

"Y...es." Sam answered slowly, not understanding where he was going with this. There wasn't much time to think about it though as he threw her the gun and picked two more down from the wall.

"What-...what?" She stuttered, opening her Zat to make sure it worked. It did.

"I do not know about the Teal'c of your timeline, but I am not so susceptible to Qetesh's tricks. My loyalties remain." Teal'c replied, an eyebrow lifting to express how amused he was with her gullibility. Sam sighed and laughed at the same time, an overwhelming feeling of relief and hope spreading through her body.

"God I missed you." She admitted, thinking back to the past year spent without any of her friends. Teal'c's eyebrow simply lifted higher and Sam looked away.

"So, just to be clear," Sam started as they made their way to the door, "you're going to help us break out?"

"I have a single mission, to avenge Ba'al's death." Teal'c informed her gravelly. "Then I must ensure the freedom of my people, a task in which you swore to aid me."

"We did. And we will. It won't be the first time." Sam assured him with a smile, feeling lighter and more certain of the future than she had in a long, long time. Something nagged at her though and she stopped Teal'c from moving forward with a hand on his arm. He waited for her to speak.

"Look, I know you have to uphold your honour and loyalty by avenging your former master's death," Sam started delicately, "but Qetesh's host, though you can't remember it, is a very close friend of ours. She was freed from Qetesh years before we met her and...I can't - we can't let you kill her."

Teal'c's face reflected his protests and Sam hurried on.

"Look, it's the symbiote - it's Qetesh - that killed Ba'al. Vala is innocent. She's a victim in this just like the rest of us. Help us extract the symbiote, and then everyone wins. You avenge Ba'al's death, weird as that sounds, and we get Vala back." Sam pleaded with him. To his credit, he seemed to consider the proposition.

"We do not possess the technology required to perform such a ritual." Teal'c told her, not uncaring of her plight.

"But the Tok'ra do." She returned, hopefully. "We just need to make contact with one of their hidden bases and convince them we're on their side." Teal'c looked at her, unimpressed.

"Is that all?" He droned sardonically.

"It's possible, I promise." Sam pressed. "We have knowledge of the Tok'ra the same way we have knowledge about you. Just give us a chance to save her."

The First Prime resisted the idea. Any addition to the plan was a complication and spelled possible disaster for his cause. But he couldn't in good conscience deny this woman, his "friend", an attempt at saving the host.

"Very well." He agreed and was rewarded by a large smile spreading over her face.

"Thank you." She said sincerely before assuming an offensive position, facing the door. "Now let's go get our team back."

 


	4. Into Battle

"She should have come back by now." Daniel said, breaking the silence that had befallen them.

"Which one?" Cam asked after a bit. Daniel turned his head against the stone wall to look at his companion in the other cell with annoyance.

"Sam." Their friend hadn't been returned to them yesterday nor this morning and he was starting to get worried. He and Cam hadn't spoken other than to relay what had conclusions had been reached with her while he was in the sarcophagus. Otherwise, they'd spent the hours silently mulling their predicament. Well, Daniel was. Cam was trapped in the pep talk he'd given Sam when they were first caught. He told her they hadn't failed anyone when he didn't fully believe that himself. And now, with his friends, his team dying around him, he was fighting the very strong temptation to wallow in his failure as a team leader.

"So..." Daniel started, expelling the air from his lungs, "we still planning to do a run-tackle? Tackle-and-run?"

Cam looked over at him and couldn't stop the wry grin from shaping his lips.

"You should never be allowed to touch anything sports related." He declared. "But yeah, they come, we tackle, we run. Basic idea."

"In my experience, that almost never works." Daniel pointed out, not really opposing the plan.

"Yeah, didn't think so." Cam agreed. "You could always fake sick, I call out to the guards and then...well, again, the tackling and the running."

"Except they'd probably just point, laugh, let me die and revive me later." Daniel predicted.

"Who wouldn't?" Cam teased him, earning himself a glare. Daniel wanted to retort that Sam wouldn't but he didn't feel right using her for banter just yet.

"Well you could hide in your cell, make it look like you disappeared. Then when the guards come and open your cell to find you...you tackle them and we run." Daniel offered. Hey, if they were going for bullshit plans...

"Stealthy I may be, Neo I am not." Cam scoffed, looking up at the ceiling, the only place suitable to hide.

"Neo?" The dusty tome-loving archeologist asked in confusion.

"You're a lost hope, Jackson." His team leader informed him with a small, amiable smile. Their amusement was short-lived though as the heavy footsteps of a Jaffa reached their ears.

"Here we go." Cam announced as they rose to their feet in anticipation. What turned around the corner was not what they were expecting though.

"Sam!" Daniel cried, relief pouring into every cell of his body.

"And Teal'c." Cam greeted the hulking man behind their teammate with much less enthusiasm.

"Hey guys." Sam smiled brilliantly at them. "Don't worry, he's with us."

"Step away from the bars." Teal'c ordered them gravelly. Daniel and Cam hesitated but quickly jumped back when the First Prime lifted his staff weapon and aimed at them. One by one, he shot off their locks and the bars slid into the walls. Daniel wasted no time in running out and enveloping his revived friend in a hug.

"I'm so sorry, Sam." He whispered, holding her tight. Sam couldn't help but smile at how guilt-ridden the poor man sounded.

"Daniel, it's okay. She was going to do it no matter what anyone said." She assured him, stepping out of his arms. "And she did have the courtesy to put me back together again so no harm done."

"Glad to see you back in one piece." Cam said, also pulling her into a hug. Sam tightened her hold on him momentarily as she remembered what he'd done for her before she died.

"Thank you." She murmured softly.

"Yeah, well," Cam started, releasing her, "don't let me make it a habit."

"Of course not." Sam replied, her eyes twinkling.

"I though Qetesh would have turned you into her First Prime." Daniel remarked to Teal'c while his friends reunited.

"She attempted to do so and believes she has succeeded." The Jaffa replied solemnly. "However, my former Lord Ba'al made me undergo extensive training to prevent such a thing from occurring."

"Gotta hand it to the guy, he didn't forget anything." Cam noted thoughtfully. "Do we have a plan?"

"One that doesn't involve tackling or running?" Daniel piped up hopefully.

"Well, we've got a rough draft of our goals." Sam offered, not wanting to get their hopes up. When they nodded for her to continue, she did. "Well we're going to  _capture_  Qetesh, stun her with the Zat, find the Tok'ra, and extract her so that Teal'c can finally carry out his final mission."

"And we get Vala back." Daniel realized joyfully.

"I like this plan." Cam approved, accepting a Zat gun from Sam. "But how are we supposed to get to her? And how do we know there are still Tok'ra out there?"

"The Tok'ra still survive despite Ba'al's best efforts. They are spread out throughout the galaxy in small factions, hiding for the moment." Teal'c informed them. "We do not, however, possess information on any of their whereabouts."

"Well we know their favourite hotspots, I'm sure they'll turn up." Cam said confidently.

"So now we go for Qetesh?" Daniel asked, testing the Zat he'd been given.

"Indeed."

* * *

It didn't take long to find Qetesh since Teal'c was supposed to be attached at her hip. They'd encountered a few Jaffa but they'd been zatted and hidden effectively. Now all that was left was to penetrate the throne room, zat the servants, guards and the queen herself before they got shot. No problem.

"What if one of them sounds an alarm and the rest of them come pouring in?" Daniel whispered as they hid the two guard who'd been standing outside of the throne room.

"I have already disabled the alarm system. Or did you imagine one could simply blast open a prison door without triggering an alarm?" Teal'c admonished him with a raised eyebrow. Daniel coloured slightly.

"Right. Good. Thanks." He whispered back. In his defense, he'd been kind of distracted by his living, breathing friend.

"I will enter the room alone and get into close proximity with Qetesh. When you enter and begin firing upon the others, I will be ready to apprehend her." The First Prime said, closing his zat and taking up his staff weapon again.

"Apprehend  _gently_ , right? No killing her yet." Cameron warned him.

"As was agreed." Teal'c bowed his head. "Wait here a count of twenty, then enter, I will be ready."

"Gotcha. Twenty starting now." Cam counted as Teal'c straightened and entered the room as a true First Prime...about to be laid off.

* * *

Qetesh smiled as she sat down in her new throne. She hadn't wanted Ba'al's and her's reminded her of fifty years' worth of subservience. It had taken time to craft a new one but she loved it. The blood staining the marble floor had also been removed and the old decorations replaced with tokens to her. All in all she was happy with the new developments, especially how the galaxy was at her command, at her every whim. Except for those who opposed her of course but they were in for bloodshed soon enough. She was thinking it was time to pay Nirrti a visit when her First Prime stepped into the room.

"Ah, Teal'c." She greeted him warmly, she loved how he was living reminder of she'd taken everything Ba'al had owned. "I trust you returned the human female to the holding cells?"

"As you commanded, my queen." He bowed respectfully. Qetesh nodded her approval.

"Rumours have reached me that the planet Earth, the one Ba'al wanted to make  _peaceful_  contact with," she said, spitting the words out like insults, "could have been the planet of the Tau'ri. Have you heard this?"

"I have not." He replied truthfully. That was a very interesting piece of information.

"Wouldn't it be just  _splendid_? I destroyed one of the last threats to my rule, and the Tau'ri in one fell swoop. All without knowing it." Qetesh crowed, her eyes positively shining with mirth. "I think we will have to return to that planet."

"Did Cronos not assure my Queen that he had destroyed it entirely?" Teal'c asked, staying respectful in his confusion.

"He did." Qetesh replied thoughtfully. "And I believe him to be trustworthy...for the moment. But I was thinking that the fallen 'Earth', the land of the Tau'ri, would be the  _perfect_  place to build my empire. Don't you think?"

"Of course, my Queen." Teal'c replied, impressed and disgusted by her disrespect for her enemies. "Shall I instruct the ship to return immediately?"

"You instruct nothing until I say so, Jaffa." Qetesh reminded him bitingly.

"Forgive me, my Queen."

Before she had a chance to reply, the door burst open and her Tau'ri prisoners ran in, zat'ni'ktels blasting. Teal'c sprang out of his bow and struck her across the temple with his staff weapon, knocking her unconscious immediately. He threw down his staff weapon and exchanged it for his zat'ni'ktel to take care of the remaining slaves and Jaffa. Then he turned the weapon on Qetesh's form and shot.

"Hey! Woah!" Daniel yelled at him, rushing across the room. "Two blasts of that  _kills_  you know!"

Teal'c give the panicked man a look of unadulterated contempt but didn't chew him out for his assumption that the former First Prime didn't know how to use his own weapons. Obviously the man had little field experience.

"I shot once only. To be sure she was unconscious." He assured him.

"Well, I think I can safely say you're fired." Cam said, clapping his hand on Teal'c's back as they both looked down at the crumpled form of the goddess.

"Indeed." He replied lowly. He didn't regret betraying this Goa'uld and he still had a mission to complete.

"We should probably find a cargo ship and get out of here." Daniel said, gently slipping off Qetesh's hand devices and checking her for hidden weapons. Sam bent down and took the sword that had killed her the day before.

"War memento?" Cam asked with amusement, knowing how cathartic it could be to possess what hurt you.

"Hm?" She replied distractedly, tearing her eyes off the blade. "Oh, no. I was just wondering what this is made of. I could barely feel it, it went through me so easily, like there was nothing resisting it." Cam scoffed incredulously. Of course she was fascinated by how it works.

"Actually it  _is_  pretty cool, I saw her cut solid gold in half without any effort." Daniel chimed in.

"It is the blade she used to kill Ba'al. She cut him in half as well." Teal'c informed them.

"Half like...?" Cam trailed off, making a horizontal motion with his hands.

"No." He said simply, letting them understand the other possibility.

"Oh, ew." Daniel lamented as he moved to pick Qetesh up. Teal'c's firm hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"She is my prisoner." He warned the archeologist. "I will bring her."

Daniel conceded and backed off.

"Pity we don't have the Kor Mak bracelets, then you could keep a leash on her in true Jaffa fashion." He muttered and was ignored.

"We good to go?" Cam asked the makeshift gang. "We can't exactly hide all these people. We'll have to make it to the hangar bay real quick."

"We are ready." Teal'c said, adjusting Qetesh over his shoulder. Sam slipped the belt and scabbard of the sword onto her waist and met the others' asking gaze.

"What?" She asked innocently. "It can cut through bone and solid gold, this could be handy down the line."

"Sure it's not just 'cause it looks cool?" Cam teased her.

"Absolutely not." She replied cheekily, laying one hand on the hilt of the sword and arming the other with her Zat gun.

"Okay, Xena and I are on point. Teal'c, you and the princess stay close since you know the way around here. Jackson, you take the back, zat her highness if she starts waking up." Cam ordered. "Got it?"

They all agreed and moved into formation. Teal'c was reluctant to take orders from this stranger but could find no fault with the plan.

Before the other former System Lords even knew it, a clocked cargo ship left the flagship of the formation and sped into hyperspace.

 


	5. Interview with a Goa'uld

"Her highness is up." Cam announced, returning from the cargo area.

"Can we just zat her again?" Sam asked tiredly from the pilot's seat. They'd been traveling for almost a week in search of any Tok'ra. So far they'd been to three planets that were known Tok'ra bases in their timeline and had come up empty each time.

"Yeah, can we  _not_?" Daniel reproached her with a frown. "We don't know what so many shots can do to someone and Vala's gonna need a functioning body after the extraction."

The others didn't argue. Daniel was providing them with all the optimism and determination they'd need to sustain them until they found the Tok'ra and they couldn't afford to diminish that.

"Well you'd better relieve Teal'c before he gets too trigger-happy." Cam advised him as he sat down in the co-pilot's chair.

Daniel sighed loudly and made his way into the back of the cargo ship. He paused a moment in front of the doors separating both compartments and took a deep breath before activating the panel on the wall. The door slid into the wall almost noiselessly but it was loud enough to attract the attention of the room's two occupants.

Teal'c sat stoically on the crate beside his prisoner, zat gun in his hand. They'd taken his staff weapon into the front compartment, just in case. Qetesh sat on the adjacent crate, bound tightly by the chords usually used to secure the cargo to the walls. Cam had tapped into his boy scout and come up with knots that, despite her best efforts, she couldn't get out of. The gag had been Teal'c's idea.

"You can take a break, Teal'c." Daniel offered as he stepped into the room. The former First Prime gave him the same look he gave the others when they offered before, the "I don't think so" look. Daniel nodded and let it go, Teal'c's presence didn't bother him anyway.

He moved further into the room and took a seat on a crate opposite the Jaffa and Goa'uld. Qetesh was glaring at him darkly, an unspoken threat somewhat diffused by the white cloth gag in her mouth. Daniel was about to attempt at small talk with Teal'c again when his stomach growled.

"Are you hungry?" He asked the Jaffa as he pushed himself off his sitting place and opened their box of supplies.

"I am not." He heard Teal'c reply from behind him as he fished for something that looked like ration bars. He'd always had a feeling that the ones the army gave them were fashioned by their enemies and sure enough, they'd opened this crate to find it full of eerily familiar foil-wrapped bars.

"What about you?" Daniel asked their prisoner, turning to see her reply. Her eyes looked confused and suspicious and Daniel caught on quickly.

"You haven't fed her?" He accused Teal'c incredulously.

"The Goa'uld can go weeks without sustenance." The large man informed him confidently. Daniel rolled his eyes and picked two more bars out of the box before closing it.

"Yeah well humans can't." He argued. "Vala's gonna need her strength after the extraction." He could practically feel Teal'c's annoyance as he approached them but he ignored it.

"She would sooner bite your hand off." Teal'c warned him as he untied the knot at the back of her head to remove the gag. Daniel hesitated a moment but her glare at Teal'c moved him to continue. He pulled the damp cloth away and watched as she flexed her jaw before turning again to Teal'c.

"Do not presume to predict me, Jaffa." She spat at him, her eyes glowing and her voice more metallic than he remembered. Teal'c stood and unfolded his Zat gun menacingly.

"Okay, no." Daniel said, stepping between them. He turned to Qetesh and grabbed the gag from beside her. "You can either be quiet and full, or you can mouth off and starve."

Qetesh surveyed them both for a moment before shrugging.

"I'll cooperate, if only to save this  _shol'va_  from soiling himself in the magnificence of my presence." She goaded Teal'c once more before quieting down when Daniel brought the gag up again.

"Why don't you just get some air until the gag is back on?" Daniel suggested again to the fuming Jaffa.

Throwing another hateful glance at the raven haired Goa'uld behind Daniel, Teal'c spun on his heels and left the room without a word. With him finally gone, Qetesh's demeanor went from gloating, egotistical and vengeful to sweet and flirtatious in the blink of an eye. Always, though, there was that spark of maliciousness and manipulation that never left her.

"Alone at last, my sweet." She cooed at him and he didn't bother hiding the roll of his eyes.

"Your tricks aren't going to work on me, Qetesh. As a good friend of mine once said, it's not my first time around this barbeque." Daniel told her, his voice purposefully light.

"Was it a trick that I saved your life, your leg?" She returned, faking emotional injury.

"First, you didn't mean to save my leg. And second, you wanted information from me. It was a compromise for you...except you never got your pay-off." Daniel smirked. Qetesh looked bored.

"Fine, then let us arrange  _another_  compromise." She suggested with a forced grin. "You undo these bindings, help me take over this vessel and, when we return to my flagship I will make you my First Prime with all it's honours and...benefits." Her gaze turned lustful and Daniel repressed his anger at being ogled like meat. Instead he busied himself by unwrapping the first bar.

"So, in essence, you want me to let you go, help you kill my closest friends, willingly go back into the Goa'uld foray and become your guard and sex toy." Daniel deadpanned, taking a bite out of the bar, not offering her any.

"It's a better prospect than whatever you've got planned, I assure you." Qetesh bit back, her eyes following the food in his hands involuntarily.

"For you maybe, not for me, not for my friends, not for Vala." Daniel returned.

"The host is gone, forget her." Qetesh snapped, she'd heard enough talk of extractions. Daniel raised an eyebrow at her outburst but calmly took another large bite from the ration bar.

"Barbeque, not the first, remember?" He asked between chews. "Vala was free of you in our timeline and she will be in this one."

"That's a very noble goal,  _Daniel_." Qetesh commended him sarcastically. "But you forget that this host has no memory of you."

"We'll make new memories." He retorted, seemingly unconcerned. Qetesh saw through it.

"Have you ever seen a newly freed host?" She asked him pointedly. "Their feeble minds can't process the changes, can't make sense of the memories. She'll have no memories of you, no, but she  _will_  have plenty of memories of the hundreds of thousands of people I've massacred. She'll have no shortage of those, I promise."

He feigned disinterest in her taunts and kept eating.

"You know, I'm the one who pushed to give you this ration bar. You should really be trying to keep me happy or I could just put it back in the box." He told her levelly but she didn't stop.

"You know what other memories she'll have to keep her all warm inside?" She mused aloud, her voice lilting tauntingly as her eyes locked on his. "Ba'al."

Daniel chewed the next piece just a little harder than before and that was all she needed.

"You know he didn't let me leave his side for fifty years?  _Fifty years_." She stressed meaningfully. "Luckily, we had more than our share of ways to relieve all the  _tension_  that built between us. And your little host, should she survive the extraction, will have those memories as well. I've already made sure of it." She promised him with a conniving smile. She saw his eyes flit to the gag beside him as if trying to restrain himself from reattaching it and she smirked. "Ba'al liked gags too." She informed him sweetly, effectively pushing Daniel over the edge.

"Okay, chat time's over. Open up." He ordered her, ripping open the other ration bar.

"You know, I don't think I'm hungry anymore." Qetesh informed him, leaning back with a victorious smirk. The human had lost his illusion of control.

"Yeah well, you don't really have an option. You can either eat on your own or Teal'c can help you." Daniel threatened her.

"Going to such lengths for my well-being, it's touching really." She mocked him as her stomach growled. Daniel's eyebrow lifted smugly.

"Your body betrays you, Qetesh. You need to eat." He told her firmly.

"Oh I don't think so. I have no doubt that your plans will fail and you will curse the days you opposed me when they do...but on the infinitesimally small chance that you succeed...well, I'm not about to make it easy for you." She growled at him, trading in her smile for a glare.

"Fine, starve." Daniel said, throwing the extra bars back in the box. "We'll be reaching the Tok'ra anytime now and then your cooperation won't matter."

"My Jaffa will come for me!" She yelled at him. Daniel actually stood still in shock, wondering if he'd heard right, before turning to her again.

"You're not serious, are you?" He asked her incredulously. "You know nobody's coming after you. The System Lords are probably fighting over who gets to rule over the others at this very moment and your Jaffa will be tossed around like pawns. You've already been forgotten."

Qetesh couldn't deny his words, she knew that's what they were doing. That's what she would have done if Ba'al had just disappeared like she had. Daniel noticed with satisfaction that she had no rebuttal. He moved to the door to the forward compartment and opened it, calling out for Teal'c. Together, they got the gag back on her and Teal'c retook his post beside her without a word. Before leaving, Daniel turned at the doorway.

"I hope you're thinking of your last words, Qetesh. Your time is running out." He menaced calmly, ignoring her gagged exclamations before walking out.

* * *

A few hours later, Sam interrupted Daniel and Cam's naps by announcing that they were coming up on their next target planet.

"Which one is this?" Cam asked, fighting back a yawn.

"This is actually where we first found them in our timeline." Sam informed him and sure enough, a few minutes later, they were in range to see the vast expanse of sand.

"I can't see the stargate on this planet." Daniel remarked. "Weren't the rings to get into the underground structure right beside it?"

"Yeah, they were." Sam said, a frown playing on her eyebrows. "The sensors aren't picking up a stargate either."

"So this is another bust?" Cam sighed. No sooner than he'd spoken the words, the cargo ship lurched to the side as a blast hit its hull.

"I thought we were cloaked!" Cam yelled, trying to find his footing as the ship was hit a second time.

"I uncloaked us once we were out of range and I was sure we weren't being followed, it was eating up too much power." Sam yelled back before she was ejected from her seat by another blast.

"What about our shields?" He asked.

"They hit them before I had time to reactivate them!" She replied. He sent her an incredulous look. "What? They were draining power too and we don't actually need them in space."

"This is not good." Daniel cried.

"No shit!" Cameron returned sarcastically.

"No, look!" Daniel said, pointing at the view window.

"That's not good." Cameron agreed. Either the sandy dunes were rising impossibly fast or they were crash-landing. Cam pushed himself away from the seat he'd been gripping and stumbled his way to the door of the cargo compartment, quickly activating the panel.

"Teal'c, get yourself and Qetesh secure, this isn't going to be pleasant!" He yelled though he saw the other man was way ahead of him. The Jaffa had tied himself to Qetesh and was in the process of getting them onto the highest crate to keep from being crushed if the crate bindings failed.

"Guys," Cam called, making his way back to the front, "you should get in the back and strap yourse-"

Before he had a chance to finish, their ship crashed into a dune and its occupants were thrown violently to the floor. Sam had done her best to make their descent angle as small as possible but they still impacted the planet at a high velocity and the shock against their bodies pitched them all into a world muted darkness.

When Cam woke up, his watch told him that only a few minutes had passed. He looked around from his place on the ground and saw Sam and Daniel still unconscious on either sides of the room.

"Jackson." He called out, rolling onto his stomach and rising to his feet. He walked over to the unconscious man and shook his shoulder. Luckily, he woke up right away.

"Mitchell? Wha-"

"We crashed, you hurt?" He asked him, already looking him over for blood.

"No, no, I think I'm fine." Daniel said, patting himself down.

"Good, go check on the others." Cam told him, helping him up and towards the back compartment. Once Daniel was through the door, he went back to check on Sam.

"Yo," he called, shaking her shoulder like he'd done to Daniel, "Carter. Wakey wakey."

Sam awoke as easily as Daniel had and sat up without his help.

"You okay?" He asked her.

"Yeah, I'm fine, just a little banged up." She said, checking her body to make sure she wasn't lying.

"Good," he replied, getting up and looking out the viewing window, "cuz we need to figure out who the hell was shooting at us."

Sam immediately got to the console and checked the scans the ship had taken.

"We didn't pick up any other ships out there, I think the shots came from the ground." She concluded after consulting the logs. She reactivated the scanners and had some bad news. "And I'm guessing whoever shot at us are the people the scanners are picking up outside the ship."

Cam threw her a worried glance and they both got their zats out of their makeshift holders. Before they had a chance to move towards the door to the outside, however, it slid open, admitting their "guests."

"Oh my god." Sam breathed.

* * *

"You  _zatted_  her?  _Again_?" Daniel asked him as he worked at the knots tethering Qetesh to Teal'c.

"She refused to cooperate." Teal'c defended himself, pulling a knife from his boot and cutting the rope between him and the Goa'uld. Qetesh fell forward and Daniel stumbled to catch her.

"Thanks for the warning." He told the other man sarcastically. Teal'c jumped off the crate and moved down to the floor for Daniel to pass his charge to him. When they were all back on the ground, they heard Cam and Sam activating their zats through the open door and quietly did the same. As they approached the forward compartment, they heard Sam's words and quickly jumped in, facing their newest enemies.

"Martouf?" Daniel exclaimed.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Why did this feel familiar? Oh, right, because it was. Daniel looked around the small room with irritation. This place was the very definition of "nondescript". The familiarity came from the days he'd spent in a similar room when he, Cam, and Sam had been detained upon being discovered on the altered Earth. He rapped his fingertips against the tabletop in front of him and sighed for the umpteenth time.

Seeing Martouf alive and surprisingly rugged had been a shock but they'd taken it in stride. Well he had, Sam had taken a while to come around to the idea. He supposed it made sense since she had shared a pseudo relationship with him through the Tok'ra who'd implanted herself in the scientist, not to mention the trauma of him dying in her arms.

Martouf and his fellow Tok'ra hadn't taken their presence - or knowledge - well. The moment Daniel had uttered his name (an impossibility unless he was a spy according to them), they'd been suspicious. Add to that Teal'c walking out and aiming his staff weapon at the Tok'ra and their afternoon had gotten very tense. Not to mention the point when they found Qetesh in the back. The humans, Jaffa, and Goa'uld had all been separated from each other and interrogated for hours and Daniel was more than tired of not being believed. He'd gotten used to his reputation carrying some credibility before Ba'al ruined their lives and being constantly accused and under suspicion was getting old.

Though he hadn't seen any of them in almost three full days, Daniel was sure Sam and Cam's more diplomatic sides would get them through safely. He was worried about Teal'c, though, and what his temper might cause. And he was especially worried about Qetesh, he had no guarantee that she was still alive. They wouldn't tell him anything despite his very loud pleas that the symbiote be extracted and the host unharmed.

Strangely enough, he was also worried about himself. Not physically; he didn't believe he was in any danger. Mentally, he wasn't sure how much more he could take of this all before he did something he'd forever regret. Losing his leg had been hard but he'd gotten through it and the prosthesis hadn't been such an inconvenience. Losing his security is what had really crippled him. Being jostled from one place to another, trying to convince everyone that he deserved to have his old life back and being denied at every turn. That's what was leaving a very obvious scar on him. And here he was again, in yet another holding cell, pleading to be believed that he wasn't crazy yet again. But they'd gotten tired of his litany hours ago and had left him alone.

"Doctor Jackson." A voice at the door surprised him. He turned to take in yet another shock.

"Freya, hi." He greeted slightly uncomfortably. A single, delicate eyebrow lifted at his personal greeting but she didn't dwell. The blonde Tok'ra made her way to the table and took a seat on the side opposite to Daniel.

"I have been told that you believe you are from an alternate timeline." She began matter-of-factly. "I specialize in science and technology among my people and I've been sent to appraise whether such a device can be fashioned at our present time."

"You're just like her." Daniel noted wryly. "Ever the consummate scientist." He didn't miss her alternate self but it was good to see a familiar face sporting the matching personality. Freya cocked her head to the side but didn't speak. She opened a small case that looked like a laptop and was poised to take notes.

"Look, if it's the physics and mechanics of the device you're looking for, you'll want Sam." He told her. "Samantha Carter, the blonde woman in our group. She's the theoretical astrophysicist. I'm...an archeologist and linguist."

"Yes, Samantha Carter. She told us that she was host to Selma'c in your alternate timeline." Freya chimed in, remembering the woman he spoke of. Daniel frowned.

"Okay, no, you must have taken your notes wrong." he said, eyeing her strangely, "She was host to Jolinar of Malkshur, against her will, for a few days about eight years ago. Her father Jacob was host, willingly, to Selma'c to cure his cancer but he died a few years back and that was a trick question."

"It was." Freya replied with a small smile after his speech. "You did well."

"Yeah, well..." Daniel trailed off, not sure whether to be angry with the mind games or happy to be making progress. He decided to be happy and bite the bullet. "Listen, I know all of this must be very left field for all of you but you have to believe that we mean you no harm."

Freya looked at him questioningly again and he rolled his eyes.

"Well Qetesh probably does but the rest of us don't. Cam, Sam and I are part of the Tau'ri, the last surviving Tau'ri in this timeline now. In our timeline, we forged an alliance with the Tok'ra early on, working closely with you, Martouf, and Selma'c. Teal'c is from your timeline but he's part of the Jaffa Rebellion against the Goa'uld, or will be once we find it. And we're only here to ask your help in extracting the symbiote Qetesh from her host so we can get our friend back and be on our way." Daniel swore to her in a rush.

When she still didn't look particularly acquiescent, Daniel was struck with a last ditch effort.

"The za'tarc testing device!" He exclaimed, startling her. "In my timeline, you invented a device that could tell whether a person was hiding the truth. Use it on us, you'll see we're not lying."

Freya was quiet a moment before bowing her head and rising again, speaking with a distinctly different voice.

"I assume you know my name as well?" Freya's symbiote asked.

"Hello Anise." Daniel greeted tiredly.

"This device you speak of does not exist." She informed him and watched him closed his eyes in frustration. "It does not exist  _yet_. However, I have been testing prototypes for some years. Prototypes only I and a select few Tok'ra know of."

Daniel opened his eyes again and looked at her with hope barely burgeoning in his eyes.

"I believe you are who you say you are. And I believe you are from an alternate timeline. Freya does as well." Anise announced.

"Thank you." Daniel all but whispered elatedly. "What about the others?"

"They have already been cleared, you were the last to confirm." Anise answered him. "You will be given temporary lodgings here until we change locations, at which time you will leave us."

"That's fine," Daniel replied honestly, rising from his chair, "we just came for Vala. Who can I speak to about performing the extraction on Qetesh?"

Freya smiled as she collected her things and rising as well.

"After preliminary interrogations revealed that Qetesh was left out of most of Ba'al's plans, the extraction was performed." She told him, his widening eyes making her smile larger. "Your friend has been free for two days."

All of Daniel's previous tiredness vanished and his body hummed with energy begging to be released. He needed to see her.

"Where?" He heard himself asked as his foot fidgeted.

"I will take you to them." Anise offered, leaving the room. He wasted no time in following her.

* * *

"Daniel!" Sam cried joyfully as he walked into their living area. They had been assigned a small common space in addition to their individual rooms and there the two humans and the Jaffa had been waiting for their fourth.

"Hey, you guys okay?" He asked distractedly as his eyes quickly searched every corner of the room.

"Yeah, you?" Cam returned, eyeing the woman behind their friend.

"Freya," Sam greeted, trying not to look too put-off by her presence, "hi."

The Tok'ra simply bowed her head in reply.

"Where is she?" Daniel asked, not bothering to act patient.

"In there." Cam pointed to a closed door across the hall from their small alcove. Daniel quickly turned around to see.

"You know she's been-?"

"We know." Sam said, soothingly. "We've tried to see her but the Tok'ra chief of medicine, Te'sin, won't let us."

It was only then that Daniel realized there weren't only three people sitting around the table in the room. At his mention, the Tok'ra stood.

"She does not wish to see anybody, surely that's understandable after what she's been through." The symbiote said in a monotone voice.

"We're her friends!" Daniel argued back.

"Not, as I understand it, in this timeline." Te'sin returned calmly. "She has no recollection of any of you. You are as much strangers to her as we are."

"You see what we've been up against?" Cam asked Daniel, his arms crossed defensively against Te'sin. They'd been trying to get at least one of them in to see Vala for the past three hours to no avail.

"She may not remember us but we know her and we have a lot of experience in dealing with newly freed hosts, either way we're an asset to her recovery." Daniel fought back with the most rational arguments he could think of. Te'sin opened his mouth to rebuke him but was interrupted.

"Te'sin," Anise called to her brethren, "I agree with the Tau'ri. They can be useful in her rehabilitations. Especially as we cannot afford to offer any of our own people at this time."

Te'sin took a moment to mull it over, no doubt to chat with his host, before simply nodding, somewhat reluctantly before turning to the Tau'ri and Jaffa.

"You must not add to her stress or agitate her in any way. Do not pressure her to remember her time as a host as it is often too traumatic for anyone to go through. And you must leave her if she so asks you." Te'sin ordered them.

"We know the rules, doc. Now can we go?" Cam asked, rising from his chair to lean against the table.

"You may, but it would be best not to overwhelm her." He replied, subtly chastising their impetuousness.

"We know, one visitor at a time." Daniel added hastily. Te'sin nodded curtly.

"Contact me should she require any further attention." He ordered before leaving the room. The others were left looking at each other in amazement. Vala,  _human_  Vala, was just beyond that door.

"So who's going first?" Cam asked needlessly. It was obvious who was going first...he just seemed to be frozen to the ground at the moment, staring intently at the closed door.

"You have had a rest, I believe one of you would be the appropriate choice." Anise told Cam and Sam as she moved to stand beside Daniel. "Dr. Jackson, if you'll follow me, I'll show you to your quarters and you can get some rest."

The moment Anise's hand touched his arm, Daniel was shocked out of the spell he'd been under and, without taking stock of his environment, he quickly walked towards the closed door that hid the woman he'd missed more than he'd ever thought possible.

"I have to see her." He mumbled by way of explanation once his hand settled on the doorknob. Cam and Sam shared a look - half joyful, half anxious - with each other and with Teal'c as they settled in for a long wait.

"So, Anise, Freya," Cam started, proud of himself for remembering the host's name, "about this rebellion..."

* * *

Daniel moved slowly but noisily into the dark room. The last thing he needed was to startle her. The ambient lights had been turned off but there's was a softly pulsing white glow emanating from the wall. It almost looked like a lava lamp and it made Daniel smile as he remembered how Vala had wanted one after she'd seen it in a movie. He should have gotten her one.

Daniel allowed his eyes to adjust to the minimal light and saw that the room contained a dresser to his left, a chair against the wall, and a bed tucked into the corner of the room. There was a door to his left as well, a closet maybe, or a bathroom. He approached the slowly, picking the chair up to bring with him. He set the furniture back down near the bed, leaving a respectable space between the two, but hesitated to sit down. At the moment, all he could see was a human-shaped lump facing the opposite wall underneath the bedding and it was taking all his willpower to resist the temptation to gently tug on her shoulder to roll her onto her back and soak in the sight of her... Te'sin was right, he was a stranger to this Vala, he had no right to touch her, hell he didn't have the right to walk into her room uninvited but he was willing to push the envelope of social protocol to the limit for this chance to be so near her again.

The dim lighting only allowed him to see that the covers were pulled up to her shoulders and the black, silky hair falling across her back and pillow. She wasn't moving on the bed but her breathing wasn't steady and every so often, she shivered. Daniel sat down in his chair, making enough noise to let her know where he was but not speaking yet. He was so afraid that to speak would sever this almost impossible scene and he wasn't willing to risk it. Finally, Vala shifted slightly on the bed, though she didn't alter her position, and he was finally ready to speak to her.

"Hi Vala," he murmured very quietly and slowly so as to not startle her, "my name is Daniel Jackson. You don't know me but I...I know what you're going through."

Vala's form had become tense and still but she made no move of acknowledging his words, or that she even understood them. He remembered vividly how near comatose Sam was after her extraction...but Cassandra had been able to guide her out of it and that bolstered his hope. Gently, he went on.

"I know...that you've been through something horrific...as of late. Freedom takes its toll on a host." He started, trying not to stumble over his awkward tongue. "And I know how confusing everything must be right now, with your memories clashing with Qetesh's, but I need you to try and understand something."

He waited a moment but she didn't give him any indication to continue or to stop so, he forged ahead.

"I know it'll sound like just one more thing to tack onto your growing list of impossible things but...my friends and I are from an alternate timeline. In...that alternate timeline, the Tok'ra freed you from Qetesh a long time ago and we had...known you for the last three years." Still no reaction. "We worked together, you and...us. We...we were very close. When my friends and I were brought to this timeline, Qetesh captured us but we overpowered her and brought you here so the Tok'ra could free you."

Nothing, not even the mention of Qetesh or the Tok'ra bought him any more reaction than the small movements she'd given him earlier. It had been ridiculous but he'd been wishing for a moment to talk to her like this, praying that this contact would somehow make their mismatched band complete again, make  _him_  -

"I'm-I'm just telling you all this to lets you know tha-that you're not...alone...here. You may not know us but we consider you one of our closest friends and we're not going to abandon you. We're here for you." Daniel told her, his sincerity pouring into his voice. Still she stayed as still and silent as a statue. He tried to stifle it but a small sigh escaped him nonetheless. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. He had serious doubts that he'd react well to some strange alien walking into his room with flowery words after he'd been traumatized either.

"Anyway, that's...that's all I wanted to say. Well, for now." He stuttered quietly, shifting awkwardly in the hard chair, letting his head drop. "Do you...do you mind...I mean, would it be okay wi-with you if I just sat here a-a bit longer?"

He didn't really expect an answer but to his surprise, he heard her hair rustle softly against her pillow. His head shot up just in time to see her settle her head back down from its slightly turned position, as is she'd been trying to look at him. Ridiculous joy spread through him at the silent acknowledgement.

"I'll take that as a yes." He voiced quietly, a smile on his voice. "Thank you."

It was probably his imagination but he could have sworn she nodded slightly in the darkness. He let himself believe it and settled deeper into the chair. Holding on to this cautious exhilaration, for the first time in many years, he allowed himself to picture the future, to dump all of his dreams into a vision to keep for the days and weeks to follow. He had no doubt that he'd need it.

 


	7. Good Morning, Sunshine

For the past two days, she'd had been shut away in her dark room, not so much fearing the outside world as trying to escape it. She had too much going on in her own head to deal with external problems. She would always remember the gruesome pain of the extraction process. To go from years without any sensation whatsoever to awakening through the worst pain she'd ever know...she wished she could forget. Thankfully, once they'd taken her out of the restraints, one of them had healed her with a healing device. Then, she wished they hadn't. Her pain-free mind had been blessed with a few disorienting minutes of emptiness before being assaulted with floods of memories, some her own, most Qetesh's and none of those pleasant.

Time hadn't really meant much to her as she lie in the bed she'd been given. They had known without asking that she would prefer the lights be turned off, the brightness hurting her newly awakened senses, and she fleetingly wondered how many broken people had lain where she lay now. She reached a silent hysteria as she saw herself as nothing but a link in a chain of mass "freed host" production. The insanity faded though. Not quickly, not easily, but it was assuaged and she was left shivering at the prospect of living. She'd been dead inside her own body for so many years, what was she to do now?

She had been Vala Mal Doran before being taken, she knew that, but she didn't feel like her anymore. Her life before Qetesh was like a protected bubble in her mind, untouchable. She could see it but she couldn't feel it. Now, without a past, and back from the abyss of nothingness, she could hardly understand the prospect of a future. She had lost her hopes, her dreams, her goals, her family, her friends...

Someone had interrupted her private sanctum of darkness, had let the outside world pierce through her hiding place both literally and figuratively. He'd made enough noise to alert her but the bright lights of the hallway splashed against her wall were enough to let her know she had been found out. She had remained still, her wide eyes fixed on the wall in front of her, unheeding of whatever the person wanted. The sound of his voice as he spoke quietly to her was both soothing and frightening. It was the first sound she had heard in days once the hustle and bustle of the Tok'ra had left her in peace. She hadn't been lucid enough to appreciate their noises then but this one she committed to memory. She absorbed his words intently, not bothering with understanding their meaning for the moment, just taking in his every sentence. It was only several minutes after he'd gone quiet that she started processing his message and realized he intended to stay. She had a sudden urge to see her stranger but after days without sleep, she lacked the energy, so she let her head fall back to her pillow to decode the rest of his statements.

She awoke the next morning, startled with the sensation of simply rousing from sleep. It was nothing like the painful jerk out of limbo that was extraction, it was a peaceful and gradual return to her senses, and she took the time to simply revel in it. She was surprised she'd slept at all, not remembering being tired. But then she recalled her stranger and the one word from his speech that she'd taken to heart. Vala. He had called her Vala. He'd given her back the simple joy of having an identity, whatever shape it might take.

Vala turned slowly in her bed, the perpetual darkness of the room giving her the time to focus on the tactile sensations of her body moving according to her own will. She lie on her back and turned her face to the side, seeing that her stranger had made good on his request to stay and had fallen asleep in the chair by her bed. In the silence of the room, however, her subtle movements had made enough of a disturbance to wake him and she saw him lift his cheek from his hand and blink owlishly a few times.

She wondered why he didn't greet her, he was looking at her but saying nothing. She could clearly see him frown by the glow of the Tok'ra emitter before he started searching for something. Spotting his prize, he lifted a pair of glasses from his lap and placed them on his nose, frowning again, no doubt, as his eyesight got better. Then he gave a start as he realized she was awake and staring at him. He didn't look away though, and a sheepish smile took shape over his lips.

"Um...morning." He said, his voice as soft and soothing as it had been yesterday. "I uh...I'm sorry, I-I didn't mean to stay the night. I mean, you must want some privacy at some point, I just - I fell asleep."

His stuttering and and his flustered appearance tugged at her mouth but it wasn't quite ready to smile yet. Instead, she focused and lifted herself slowly into a sitting position on the bed to bring them roughly to the same height. The man looked fleetingly toward the door but made no move to leave. He simply shifted in his chair to get more comfortable.

"How are you feeling?" He asked warmly. It was then she realized that he wasn't a Tok'ra, nor a Jaffa. He was dressed strangely and spoke with a different accent than she was used to.

"Who are you?" She whispered, her voice sounding rough and raspy even to her own ears.

The man looked slightly taken aback, obviously he hadn't really expected her to speak. His face softened though and he smiled again.

"I guess you really were sleeping yesterday." He grinned, looking like he felt foolish.

"I wasn't." She replied, her voice cracking from disuse. "I just...I couldn't..." She broke up, her hand gesturing to her head trying to convey how she hadn't been completely there. He seemed to understand as he nodded sympathetically. Before he could introduce himself again, her throat tickled from speaking and she raised her hand to her neck uncomfortably.

"Oh, hey, how about I, um, get you some water?" He asked, standing up, seemingly eager to be of use. For a moment she wanted to say no, she didn't want him to leave, but her throat demanded reprieve so she nodded again. To her surprise, he didn't leave the room but rather crossed over to the other side.

"Do you mind if I turn the lights on just a little?" He called to her, the glow of the Tok'ra emitter didn't reach that side of the room.

"Sure." She replied, the tickle turning into a cough at the tail-end of her word.

"Okay, cover your eyes for a minute." He asked her, groping the wall to find the light mechanism. A moment later, she could see a faint orange glow between the closed fingers over her eyes and as she let herself look at it, she found that it didn't give her a headache as it would have days ago. Slowly, and squinting heavily, she took her hand away from her face and looked at the room revealed to her.

There wasn't much on her side other than her bed and the chair near it. The man's side was furnished with a dresser and apparently a bathroom. She could see him at the sink, his back turned to her but his face visible from the angle of the mirror. He looked to be in his mid-thirties at least, his light brown hair was cut short and his face was handsome but unremarkable. His eyes, however, were a startling clear blue that was obvious even at this distance. They shifted slightly to the left in the mirror and locked with hers as he filled the glass from the tap.

As he came back out of the bathroom, his hand reached for the light switch but she stopped him.

"You can leave it." She said, coughing again. He nodded and quickly crossed the floor to give her the cup before retaking his place in the chair. The cool liquid caressed her throat and she relished the feeling. She hadn't eaten or drunk anything since the extraction and only now was she starting to realize that the pit in her stomach might not be emotionally-related. She didn't have much time to dwell on it since the man leaned forward in the chair, his elbows on his knees, looking at her with more kindness than she was used to.

"My name is Daniel Jackson." He said simply, as if unsure about going on with the speech he made last night.

"Right. Daniel." Vala echoed. She hadn't completely forgotten what he'd said, she just hadn't...absorbed it all. "Nice to meet you." Daniel smiled at the weirdness of the situation. Vala tried to reciprocate but all she could manage was a slight quirking of the corners of her lips.

"How...how do you know me again?" Vala asked him, feeling a jab in her heart as the light visibly dimmed in his eyes. "I just- my memories aren't exactly...well structure at the moment."

"No, no," Daniel assuaged her concern, stretching out a hand to stop her uncertainty, "we've never actually met...this time."

Vala's brow furrowed as she tried to recall what he'd said yesterday.

"Something...about an alternate timeline?" She asked timidly, setting her empty glass on the floor.

"Exactly," he confirmed, "I'm, well my friends and I, we're from a different timeline."

"One where we knew each other." Vala concluded, trying not to feel jealous of her alternate self when his eyes softened in memory of her.

"Yes, we were pretty close." He told her before realizing it. "We all - we were all...close."

Vala's gaze was analytical but she let it go.

"And you brought me here, to get her - to fre -" She stumbled over her words, her mind refusing to say them aloud.

"Yeah, well...yeah." Daniel intervened. He was going to expand the story but including Qetesh into their conversation wasn't something either of them wanted. Vala nodded absentmindedly before looking into his blue eyes again.

"Thank you." She said sincerely, adding a shrug to try to dispel to overwhelmingly solemn air that had descended upon them.

"Anytime." He replied with a lopsided grin. This time, Vala was able to produce a small smile in return. A somewhat awkward silence fell over them and Daniel picked up her glass from the floor and went to get her a refill to break it. While he let the water run a bit to get colder, her heard Vala from her bedroom.

"Daniel?" She called him. He caught her eyes again in the mirror as he slipped the glass under the cool stream. Vala's eyes dipped low and her confidence seemed to evaporate as he looked on. "What now?" She asked softly. Daniel let his eyes move back to his own in the mirror and mentally asked himself the same question.

"Sleep well?" Cam asked Sam as she plopped into the chair across from him and Teal'c at the table of their alcove for breakfast.

"Well but not long." She said, blowing a large sigh as she reached for the juice.

"Trouble getting to sleep?" He asked as he spread some kind of fruity jam on his bread.

"No, Martouf just kept going on and on." She said, trying to stifle a yawn before noticing the look the guys were sending her. "Not like that." She rolled her eyes and filled her plate with fruits. "Jolinar didn't find a host in time in this timeline, she never made it back to the Tok'ra." Sam told them. "Martouf wanted to know, well, pretty much everything I did."

"Ah, guess it would have been kind of cruel to make him wait." Cam replied, sympathizing with the Tok'ra. Sam shrugged.

"I agreed to meet with him later to tell him what we didn't get to yesterday but I'm drawing the line at memory recall devices." She told them.

"What about you, big guy? Got any plans?" Cam asked the silent Teal'c. Sam recognized his behaviour from three years ago when he'd been trying to get everyone involved and excited about regrouping.

"I do not." He replied simply.

"Well how about you and me find a training room and see how I measure up to you in this timeline?" Cam offered with a competitive grin. Teal'c considered the proposition and finally accepted.

"Anyone know when Jackson's gonna join us?" Cam asked the table.

"I don't know." Sam replied. "I was up late in here with Martouf and I didn't see him leave Vala's room. I don't even know where his room is."

"Dr. Jackson did not sleep in his room last night." Anise told them, her metallic voice making them all tense a moment as she stepped into the alcove.

"And you know that how?" Cam asked her, keeping his tone light.

"I have just come from his quarters, there is no sign anyone has been in them." She informed them, understanding by their looks that they wanted more information. "I was going to invite him to break his fast with me. It would give me the opportunity to learn more about your timeline."

"Of course." Cam replied, sharing a sidelong glance with Sam. She could have gotten that information from any of either of them.

"He must have remained with Qetesh's host." Teal'c concluded. Cam winced and turned to face the former First Prime.

"Vala...Vala." He stage-whispered to the big man. Teal'c's eyebrow rose momentarily but he acquiesced.

"With Vala." Teal'c amended himself.

Anise's placid face now wore a small frown.

"Te'sin advised against overwhelming her. He should not have stayed the night." She said, making her way to Vala's door.

Sam shot out of her seat and put her hand out in front of the Tok'ra to halt her progress.

"Daniel knows not to push her, trust me. He would have left if he didn't think she was comfortable. Just give him some time." She told the other woman. Anise looked utterly unconvinced but she wasn't going to challenge her without concrete arguments.

"Very well." She conceded. Sam moved to return to her seat but Anise's host stopped her.

"Col. Carter." Freya addressed her. "Dr. Jackson told us that you might be able to give us details on the temporal device Ba'al created."

"Oh." Sam returned, slightly surprised, "Yes, actually I wanted to talk to you about that myself. I've got an idea, granted it's a little out there, to possibly rebuild it."

"Rebuild it?" Cam asked her incredulously from the table.

"Well, yeah." Sam replied, shifting from one foot to the other. "If we could rebuild it, we could go back in time and fix the timelines." She turned to Teal'c. "That way the Jaffa would be free," she turned to Freya, "and the Goa'uld would be vanquished."

"We will have to bring this matter to the High Council." Freya said, her eyes shifted to the side as she considered the possibilities. "They will reconvene tomorrow afternoon. We should meet today to plan as much as possible."

"Sure," Sam said excitedly, "I just have to meet with Martouf and Lantesh this morning and then we can go over what I remember."

"That would be acceptable." Freya smiled at her. She bowed her head in a farewell to the others and left them to their breakfast.

"Seriously though," Cam began as he munch on a sweet-tasting piece of yellow fruit, "shouldn't we be checkin' on those two?"

Sam and Teal'c followed his line of sight to the perpetually closed door to Vala's room but stayed in their seats with uncertainty.

Daniel took his time getting back to Vala. He handed her back her refilled cup and paused a moment before sitting back down.

"Well," he started gently, "that's really up to you. I mean, we have a general plan to go with but we're not going to force you to do anything you don't want to."

Vala's grey eyes asked him to elaborate over the rim of her glass.

"Well, we kind of promised we'd help Teal'c free the Jaffa from the oppression of the Goa'uld." Daniel informed her, his eyes rising to ceiling, his brow furrowing uncomfortably. Vala almost chocked on her water as her first laugh as a free woman escaped her.

"Is that all?" She asked, shocked and amused.

"Well we had to say something to keep him from shooting us, and at the time we thought fixing the timeline was still an option." Daniel explained. He was used to ignoring the small pang that accompanied the realization that his old life would never be again. "But we're stuck here until the Tok'ra decide to move which is probably a few weeks at the most now that the System Lords will be on the prowl."

Vala nodded, looking intently into the water in her glass. Daniel couldn't help his smile. She looked so much like his Vala had when she thought the base psychiatrist was going to give her a failing grade. It was the look she made when she was trying to convince herself she didn't care that she wasn't accepted.

"Vala," he said, earning himself a cautious look from the woman sitting on the bed, "I'd...we'd all like it if you chose to come with us. I know you don't know us at all but we...we've all missed you."

The effect was immediate if restrained. She ducked her head but he could see a hint of a smile on her lips. It faded quickly as the sentiment faded and her situation returned, but he'd seen it.

"You...you'll probably want to meet them before you decide." Daniel realized, eager to introduce her to her alternate timeline self's past. Vala visibly tensed on the bed, however. Daniel had eased gently into her sphere while she was still on the last waves of the confusion of extraction. Actively meeting new people...she wasn't sure she wanted to do that just yet.

"Maybe....maybe in a bit?" Vala asked awkwardly. She didn't want to offend her only "friend."

"Oh o-of course, yeah." Daniel sputtered, shaking his head. "Take all the time you need."

Vala's head dipped once and silence fell over them again. Daniel's stomach suddenly growled with hunger and his head shot up as he mentally cursed himself.

"You must be starving!" He exclaimed, startling her.

"I don't-"

"You can't lie to me, Vala." he admonished her good-naturedly. "If you're anything like you're alternate self, you're always ready to eat and I know that you haven't eaten a single thing in almost a week."

Vala shrugged, her face a mix between a pout and a grin in reaction to her half-hearted protest falling flat on its behind.

"Why don't I go see what I can find?" Daniel said, rising from his chair. "The guys will probably be wondering where I am."

"Oh, yeah, you should...see them." Vala nodded jerkily, feeling an urge to rise. She wasn't sure, however, whether it was to see him out or to stop him from going.

"I'll be back, Vala. I promise." Daniel said softly, his hand halfway out to raising her chin before he stopped himself. Vala watched it as he let it fall quickly and tried to paint at least a small smile on her face. The end product was decidedly wobbly.

"I know. Go on." She told him, finally getting up and seeing him to the door. "I'm not going anywhere." She opened the door but stayed hidden behind it. Daniel hesitated but his concern over getting her some food won out and with a parting smile, he left the room. Vala closed the door quickly behind it and turned to face the painfully empty room. He'd be back. He promised.

"Morning, Sunshine." Cam called as he spied Daniel leaving Vala's room uncertainly.

"Daniel, hey, how's Vala?" Sam asked, unable to contain her concern over her friend.

"She's good, she's...she's getting through it." Daniel told them as he approached the table.

"Is she up to having visitors?" Sam asked hopefully.

"Ah...no, no, not yet." Daniel said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "I, uh, I'm not sure she's even that comfortable with me at the moment."

"Did you talk to her at all?" Sam asked her, her hopefulness tapered into disappointment.

"Yeah, today she talked." He said, taking one hand out and pointing towards the plates on the table. "I told her I'd get her some food, she hasn't eaten at all."

Sam pulled out the chair next to her and Daniel kneeled on it, wanting to get the food back to Vala as soon as possible. Teal'c handed him the extra plates and Cam pushed the platters towards him to fill them.

"So what's the damage?" Cam asked point-blank. Daniel paused in his food shoveling to consider his answer.

"Well, she's doing better than Sarah Gardner, that's for sure." He said. Sam and Cam let out a breath of relief as they thought of the woman who had to be institutionalized after her experience.

"She's still Vala. She's still a survivor, a fighter." Daniel continued confidently. "She's just a little more...skittish than usual. I don't know when she'll be up to crowds."

"Well we've got time." Cam declared after a moment of silence. "We'll just have to find some patience to go with it."

Daniel grinned and was thankful he was allowed admittance in Vala's room when the others weren't. He lifted his two full plates and Sam put some utensils on the side of both.

"Thanks." He said. "I should get back."

"Gloat some more, why don'tcha?" Cam called after amiably. Daniel knocked on Vala's door and when it opened, he turned to throw Cam a teasing smirk before he entered. If felt so good to joke within the almost reformed team.

"Jerk!" Cameron yelled at him, the smile evident in his voice.

"Who was that?" Vala asked with a somewhat worried face as she took the plate he handed her and closed the door.

"Oh, that was just Cam." Daniel said, his smirk still playing across his lips. "He's just jealous."

"Oh." She replied thoughtfully. "Jealous of...of-"

"Jealous that I get to see you and they don't." He finished her sentence with a soft smile. "They really care about you."

Vala replied with a smile but stayed silent. The more she heard about them, about their relationship with her alternate self, the more she was worried she wouldn't live up to her and the more she became afraid of disappointing them. She cleared her head of those anxious thoughts and sat back down on her bed, her mouth already watering from the smell of the food on the plate.

"Daniel." Vala voiced, needing to speak before being able to start eating. He looked up at her, a piece of meat halfway to his mouth. "Thank you...for coming back."

Daniel's lips curled into a sweet smile that made her feel the need to look away.

"I always will, Vala." He promised her and then she really couldn't stop her eyes from shifting back to her plate. Daniel seemed to understand that it was too much and shifted seamlessly into small-talk about himself, the Tok'ra, anything that didn't

come too close to heavy topics. Before he knew it, their plates were empty and Anise was knocking on Vala's door asking for his assistance.

"I'll be back." Daniel promised by the door.

"I know you will." She told him honestly. She didn't really know him but she had a feeling she could trust him. He shot her a smile and then he was out the door. Not a minute later, there was another knock on the door and Vala smiled as she went to answer.

"I told you I believe you, Daniel, you didn't have t-" Vala's eyes widened as she caught sight of her visitor. Suddenly, the levity that had settled within her from Daniel's presence vanished and she was once again just a freed host, almost devoid of emotions. It was a useful defense mechanism.

"May I enter?" The familiar stranger asked. She stared almost vacantly into her doorway but, against her better judgement, she opened the door wider.


	8. Uncertainties

Daniel tried hard not to sigh and loudly express his discontent at being roped into this meeting. Only Sam was really necessary to discuss the possibility of recreating the temporal device with the Council. But no, Freya and Anise decided he absolutely had to be there and he was unable to decline the  _request_  of their hosts. Even Cam had been  _invited_ , probably just in time too since the way he was gingerly sitting in his chair made Daniel believe that their friendly neighbourhood Jaffa still packed a punch.

Sam was droning on about how she believed the temporal device worked, visibly excited with her explanations but Daniel couldn't seem to reach her level of enthusiasm for one very specific reason.

"I don't think we should do it."

His spontaneous declaration brought the room to silence, his two teammates looking at him with shock.

"Jackson?" Cam called from his seat next to Sam.

"Look," he began haltingly, "I would give anything to go back to our real lives. To get back to a free Earth, free Jaffa, safe Tok'ra, believe me. But I don't think this is the kind of technology that should ever be recreated. Forgive me for saying this but, especially not with you." His doubt was aimed at the Tok'ra who looked none-too-pleased with the implications.

"Dr. Jackson, you doubt we would use the device for good?" Martouf asked with a hard edge.

"No, Martouf, not at all." Daniel replied sincerely. "But I don't think you'll use it the way we intend to. To reestablish the original timeline." The Tok'ra did not look any less affronted.

"Tell me honestly that you wouldn't try to use the device to save Jolinar." Daniel accused him gently, feeling bad for the look of pained shock on the other man's face but no longer willing to beat around the bush. "Tell me that none of you would want to use it to save someone, or to stop someone before they hurt others."

No one spoke.

"They are noble and good intentions, but we'd be back at square one where the timeline would be drastically altered and who knows what the result could be." Daniel continued before looking back at Martouf. "I mean, let's just consider what Jolinar's death resulted in. Sam never would have made contact with a goa'uld-like entity that wanted to fight on our side, the Earth-Tok'ra alliance might never have been forged, and we're back to this timeline's reality where you're being hunted into extinction because we never had a chance to fight together."

"Our only goal should be to reset our original timeline." Daniel concluded. "And I'm sorry, but I can't trust the Tok'ra of this timeline to uphold that."

Alright, so maybe it had been a good idea to come to this meeting after all.

* * *

As the Jaffa made his way to the center of her small room, Vala couldn't bring herself to close the door, at least not with them both on the same side of it. She was in an odd place between terrified and apathetic. It was like a protective blanket of numbness had settled over her shoulders, the same one she'd worn for days before Daniel had come to gently tug it off of her.

"What do you want?" She asked tonelessly, her eyes low and restless, but the Jaffa simply inspected her from head to toe. Teal'c had never seen this woman as she was now. This scared, disheveled woman with a quiet yet rough voice was completely unknown to him.

"ColonelMitchell has informed me that we were once part of a group called SG-1 in the alternate timeline." He began formally, catching the look of confusion on her face. "Colonels Mitchell and Carter have been keeping vigil outside during your convalescence. They are friends of DanielJackson."

"He- He told me there were others..." Vala nodded in comprehension.

"ColonelMitchell is attempting to rebuild what they once had," Teal'c continued, hands at his back, "which he says includes a bond of camaraderie between us."

"Ha." Vala chuckled humourlessly. "You know my memories are...well quite frankly they're something akin to the debris of a naquada explosion. But I get the strangest feeling that not too long ago you were actively trying to kill me."

"Indeed, I was." Teal'c intoned with no hint of remorse. "Qetesh needed to be destroyed."

"That she did." Vala agreed quietly.

"And now she has been." The massive man pointed out before stepping into her personal space, making her feel like the the universe was imploding in on her and she'd be crushed. She took an immediate step back but she forgot that she'd been in front of the stile of the door and her progress was rudely halted.

"Are you familiar with the adage 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'?" His voice somehow managed to pierce through her haze of panic to reach her.

"It's...pretty universal, yeah." She said, managing not to stutter. Out of her peripheral view she saw him move and her body tense until she could process that he had extended his hand, palm upwards.

"You have nothing to fear from me, ValaMalDoran. We were never enemies." He encouraged her. Vala stared at his hand for quite a few moments, just absorbing the context of this scene. Finally, though, she took a cleansing breath and boldly put her hand in his, shaking it as firmly as her weakened state allowed her. Without letting go, she finally let her eyes rise to meet his.

"No, I don't suppose we were."

ooooooooooooooooooooo

"Jackson, wait up!" Cameron cried, jogging with Sam to catch up to their teammate after the Council had adjourned until the next day. Daniel stopped with a small sigh and turned.

"You wanna tell me what that was in there?" Cam questioned, more than a bit confused.

"Guys, I meant what I said in there." Daniel shrugged. "We don't  _know_  these Tok'ra, we shouldn't be trusting them with this kind of technology."

"Okay, so we find another race to team up with." Cam returned, his hands splayed out to express his inability to understand the problem.

"Which?" Sam asked them both, trying to act as mediator but not able to think of a viable option. "The Asgards would be my first choice but we've had no indications that they didn't destroy themselves like in our time. After them and the Tok'ra, who's left with the means and willingness to trust  _us_?" Daniel nodded readily.

"Fine. Then we do it on our own, in secret, and rig an explosive with a timer to blow it up after the timeline's been restored if you're that paranoid." Cam interjected.

"Okay, first, if we made it back to our time, the machine we built in this one wouldn't exist anymore so we wouldn't need to worry about it." Daniel replied coolly, looking to Sam for confirmation on his answer. She nodded distractedly and he continued. "Second, how exactly do you propose we do that with no resources, no home world, and arguably no allies?"

"We-We'll figure it out, okay?" Cam all but yelled. "What's up with you?"

Daniel bowed his head uncomfortably but didn't answer.

"Yeah, Daniel...you're acting as if you don't want the timeline to be fixed." Sam approached more calmly, laying a soothing hand on Cam's arm.

"Of  _course_  I want it to be fixed." He replied honestly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I just... There's no guarantee that it'll work perfectly, for one. And can you imagine how long it would take us to appropriate all the material we'd need? To set it up? For Sam to perfect the calculations? Not to mention needing a  _stargate_  to hide with this thing because we couldn't exactly install the device right next to a functional stargate on any old inhabited planet! It could be ten years before it was ready to go."

"So we'll have more gray hairs when we get home, I'm not seeing the problem." Cameron replied slowly, teeth clenched.

"You're  _done_ , aren't you?" Sam asked, her voice soft but accusing as she faced Daniel down. "You were all fight until we found Vala and now you're done."

The empty corridor was completely devoid of sound for long moments until the man in question felt able to reply. "Maybe I am."

"Are you kidding me with this?" Cam asked, physically removing himself to the farther wall for fear he'd do irreversible damage to a certain archeologist. He didn't stay turned away for long before he swerved back around, his finger jabbing in Daniel's direction. "You realize there's a  _sane_  Vala waiting in our timeline right? One who wasn't made Ba'al's queen? Who wasn't tortured for god knows how long? And what about, I don't know, the six  _billion_  people on Earth? They've been  _wiped out_  and those who haven't probably wish they were!"

"And we can help them!" Daniel yelled back, his fist coming out of his pocket to rest tensely at his side.

"Not really, Daniel." Sam got into the mix, crossing her arms. "I mean we can help the handful of survivors who have been made slaves, yes, but what about the millions, billions who didn't make it? We can save them  _all_  by fixing the timeline."

"Okay," Daniel returned, his tone sarcastic, his own arms crossing, "what about the countless worlds that have been enslaved or 'cleansed' by the Ori that never would have if not for us? The Ori aren't in this part of the universe at  _all_  in this timeline. Hell,  _Adria_ isn't alive either to lead the crusade because Vala never went to the Ori galaxy. How does that enter into your figures?"

His opponents had no rebuttal.

"Look, I'm not saying that we definitely can't  _try_  to get back to what we used to be but guys...you'd resigned yourself,  _we'd_  resigned ourselves to a life on the alternate Earth, never having any contact with each other, with Teal'c, with Vala, or anyone we even knew on the planet. Why couldn't you live with this life?" Daniel asked them.

"We were only resigned to that life because Big Brother was watching our every move." Cam threw back.

"Please, we could have found a way around that. I mean, we weren't exactly lacking in ingenuity or resources." Daniel retorted, rolling his eyes.

"You're saying we were already done too." Sam concluded quietly. Daniel's shoulders bunched up and his head bobbed slightly.

"I think we needed a break. Mundanity. Some peace for a while." He said with the air of great reflection.

"And now that peace has been shattered, wouldn't you say?" Cam asked darkly, not satisfied with the turn of events. "That was our cue to get our butts in gear, which we did."

"And got our asses handed back to us." Daniel drawled, unimpressed.

"We got our people back!"

"Exactly!" Daniel exploded, his hands coming out in supplication for understanding. "We have Teal'c and Vala back in a world that's gone to hell. Our options now are staying in this world with them or, what? Spending the next ten or more years slowly gathering components? That would likely mean  _stealing_  them as we have nothing to trade, no one to vouch for us, nowhere to go. And stealing means sooner or later getting into more trouble with the Goa'uld or whoever else could possibly be out there in this timeline. Is that the life you want to live for the next indefinite period, Mitchell? Sam? On the run or fighting for our own selfish purposes?"

"What do you suggest instead?" Sam asked instead of replying.

"I suggest...finding a peaceful, habitable world and just...live." He said with a shrug, surprising even himself with the conclusion he reached.

"And just forgetting about everyone who died on Earth?" Cam asked, jaw clenched. "Huh? What about General O'Neill? General Landry, everyone we knew on base? What about Cassie Frasier?"

"We don't know they're all dead." Daniel returned futilely. "And I've already said, you had  _both_  resigned yourselves to  _never_  having any contact with them for the rest of your lives, just like I did. How is that any different?"

"It's different in that we knew they were alive!"

"Is it?" Sam sighed, wishing there were chairs in this corridor as her strength was just running out of her as her brain processed what she'd refused to let it before. "We had no clue who was and who wasn't alive on Earth aside from Generals O'Neill and Landry. We don't know if those who were alive were well or... And Cassie Frasier isn't a Frasier in this time. She could be safe on her homeworld with her real parents for all we know. Maybe Nirrti never went there in this time."

"We could find out." Daniel suggested sympathetically. "We know the address. We know the address of almost every planet we could want to go to and those to avoid. And Teal'c knows this timeline, he could guide us in it just like he did when he first joined SG-1 over a dozen years ago."

His two friends could no longer reply under the weight of their thoughts so with a grim smile, Daniel left them with some final words. "If we do decide to try to get back, I'll be there with you. You know that. I just...we do have other options and consequences to think about."

As soon as he'd rounded the corner, Cam let himself slide to the floor, leaning back into the curvature of the Tok'ra walls, his arms resting loosely on his knees. Sam watched him with torn eyes and moved without reservations when he patted the floor beside him. For a long time, neither said anything, both still reeling from their confrontation with Daniel and comfortable just sharing this quiet moment.

"Could we really do this?" Cam finally ventured, eyes fixed on the opposite wall.

"Daniel could. Vala probably could too, she's been through a lot. She'd probably kill for some time out of the fray." Sam replied, absently ticking their friends off with her fingers. "Teal'c..."

She looked over at him and they both grinned. "Not a chance."

"And what about us?" He asked, nudging her with his shoulder.

"I don't know." Sam replied, losing her smile. "Well I'm betting you'll be able to sit on your hands for all of a month or two."

"I could do two, easy." Cam boasted, a playful smirk dancing along his lips, bringing hers back to her mouth.

"Yeah? What about that time we had nothing but reconnaissance missions for a month and Lam had to declare you unfit for gate travel because you'd overexerted yourself working out with Teal'c and tore a muscle?" She teased him, eyebrow lifted. "Face it, you're an adrenaline junkie."

"Yeah, alright. Maybe." He conceded with a lopsided grin. "What about you? You wouldn't miss kicking ass every so often?" Sam chuckled and smiled broadly.

"I think you underestimate my scientist side. You could lock me in a room with some mysterious device and I'll spend the month happily forgetting about the rest of the world."

"Yeah, but I doubt there were be too many of those devices on the worlds Jackson's suggesting." Cam pointed out gingerly.

"That's true." Sam nodded, her eyes taking on a pensive look. "And...I don't know that I could really stand aside and just twiddle my thumbs knowing Earth has been taken over. I don't know that I can stay away from that."

Cam's head tilted to the side appraisingly before his arm made its way around her shoulders. "Well, if you couldn't, you know I'd have your back. Rain, wind or snow."

She knew that very well and wasn't sure what her mental state would be at this point if she didn't have that assurance. "What about hail?"

"Oh," he started, his face turning into a visible grimace, "I don't know. That stuff really hurts. I mean, would we be fighting indoors? Because then, yeah, I could just hightail it from the ship or gate to the fighting location and I'd be fine. But outdoors..."

Crystal pure laughter bubbled out of Sam and she dropped her head sideways onto his shoulder. Cam's face cleared into a pleased smile and his arm tightened around his teammate, enjoying this moment of mindless levity before the hard stuff came back into his mind.

* * *

Daniel pushed the conversation with the guys out of his mind as he rounded the last corridor before Vala's room. He wouldn't think about that for now, he needed to be focused on her recovery first and foremost. Daniel hadn't seen their Jaffa friend in a while but they'd all agreed that there should always be someone near Vala to make sure she wasn't disturbed and to have someone there should she need anything. He assumed that since the rest of them had been called to the Council, their friend would have come to stand guard...but to be honest, this timeline's Teal'c still had him a bit on edge, especially where Vala was concerned. And that creeping worry was definitely not allayed when Daniel saw a distinct lack of Teal'c out in the hallway and spotted the door to Vala's room slightly ajar.

Despite having just argued for a peaceful retreat to a simpler life, Daniel's years of combat training kicked in and he quieted his footsteps, eyes wide and ears on the alert for anything awry. As he reached the side of the doorway, he paused and was confirmed in his suspicions.

"You can't do that." Protested a husky but huffy voice.

"You did not specify that during the establishment of the rules." Teal'c. Smug Teal'c. Yeah something was definitely wrong with this picture.

"Well I assumed I was playing with someone who wasn't a cheat!" Vala replied. He could tell by her tone that she was pouting.

"You assumed incorrectly."

"You know this really isn't fair. You've had decades of training to be statue-stoic. I've only regained a  _barely_ tenuous control of my emotions a day or two ago." If Daniel closed his eyes and disregarded the content of her complaint, he could have sworn it was his Vala decrying the injustice. Her voice had the same pitch and intonation as when she knew she had lost but was determined to milk everything she could out of an argument. And the breezy, casual mention of what horrors she'd been through...well that was nothing if not Vala.

Daniel slowly let himself into the room to finally lay eyes on the spectacle he'd been eavesdropping on. Vala sat cross-legged on her bed, Teal'c sat on the chair he'd left, and between them a set of colourful chips spread out in a special array on a second chair.

"Hey guys," he called, his entrance having been ignored, "what's going on?"

"Daniel!" Vala greeted joyfully, her smile growing greatly. "We're playing Reds, you can play on my team."

"There are no teams in Reds." Teal'c intoned, his brows furrowing in disapproval.

"Oh, please. Look at him, he'll probably be more of a detriment to my efforts anyway, let him feel included. Besides, between you and that snake in your stomach, I'd say it's been teams-play from the get-go." Vala returned dismissively, already doling out a new round. Her opponent's single brow of appreciation rose and he nodded, accepting his chips.

Daniel, however, still hovering near the door, was torn between feeling affronted by the implication that he couldn't hold his own in their game and wanting to grin with the joy of having been teased by the woman before him. The woman he'd just found again, who was sitting with someone who should be her enemy, who was trusting someone she barely knew. The latter emotion definitely won out but he withheld his grin lest he prove her point.

"I'll just watch for this round, I think." He said, taking a seat next to Vala on the bed. "I don't really know how to play this one."

"You don't hustle, you don't shoot at things. Darling, what is it exactly that you do?" Vala asked distractedly.

"Wha- I shoot at things!" He protested.

"No you don't. My new friendly Jaffa here says you're some type of intellectual that plays with dirt." She replied loftily, sharing a solid look with the man across from her that conveyed nothing but amusement.

"Not dir- It's- I'm an archeologist, I-I uncover and study and protect artifacts." Daniel answered, eyes closed, bushy eyebrows frowning.

"Like treasure?" Vala perked up, placing a chip down with a sharp clack.

"No, not like treasure." Daniel sighed before looking up and nodding his head sideways. "Well actually some of it is treasure, yes."

"Ooh, please tell me we were a gang of interplanetary jewel thieves, or grave robbers. I can see it now: Muscles here with the connections and intimidation factor, you as the resource man and scalper, my lovely self as the extravagant distraction, and Cameron and Samantha as the under-the-radar perpetrators."

"We were not interplanetary jewel thieves." He replied, long-suffering though the small grin on his face belied his amusement at the image she painted. Instead of arguing the point further, he turned to Teal'c. "You spent a couple of days with the guys and you didn't discuss what SG-1 did at all?"

"We did." The large man replied, playing a chip. "ValaMalDoran refused the explanation."

"Well I mean fighting the evils of the galaxy  _is_  glamorous I suppose. And I'm sure there are good spoils to be had by grateful village-folk and the likes. But honestly, Muscles, look at that face." Vala scoffed, gesturing towards Daniel before playing another tile. "I haven't seen your Cameron or Samantha but if they're cut from the same cloth I'm thinking we kicked some Goa'uld rears while they kept our drinks fresh and our clothes neatly pressed."

"Hey!" Daniel protested once more. Vala turned her head to the side to catch the blue-eyed man looking down at his biceps and choked back a grin.

"Yes, darling, those are nice, I just can't see you using them." She patted his leg sympathetically. Teal'c, across from her, grinned and laid a tile down on the chair, the slightest detectable flutter of his lashes telling her all she needed to know. With a very wide and smug smile, Vala laid down the tile that ended the game softly on top of her opponent's. Teal'c's lips straightened in displeasure but he tipped his head in congratulations.

"Thank you, darling," she said, turning to flash Daniel a victorious smile, "seems we do make a good team after all."

"We could have told you that." A new voice came from the door, creating a hush in the room.

"Cameron Mitchell, I presume?" Vala greeted, inwardly pleased to find herself doing so without much fear or anxiety in the face of strangers.

"Yes, ma'am." Cam replied cheekily as he edged the door open to its full angle and admitted himself into the room. A shorter blonde appeared from behind his tall frame smiled happily at the other woman in the room.

"Hi Vala." She waved shortly but brightly.

"Samantha, is it?" Sam nodded and came closer behind Teal'c.

"It's very nice to finally meet you both." Vala declared softly, her eyes taking in her 'teammates' before sniffing and shrugging. "To be honest, I was starting to think Daniel had just made you up to lull me into a false sense of security and make off with me in the middle of the night to suit his deep-seated carnal instincts."

As the three other occupants in the room who weren't archeologists started laughing, Vala took a moment while reshuffling the stack of tiles to savour the feeling of being surrounded by real people, real people who actually seemed to care about her. And then she got back to what she did best.

"Up for a round of Reds?" She invited the two late-comers.

"Um, sure, if you wanna teach us." Sam said as Cam got a few extra chairs from the hallway. Someone could have suggested going out there where there was an actual table and room to move but somehow it just wasn't brought up.

"Apparently it's a game where you have to out-bluff others." Daniel explained, still nearly pouting from earlier.

"Meaning Sam's gonna kick all our butts, again?" Cam whined, setting the chairs down.

"Nonsense," Vala interjected, "there's plenty more to this game than a battle of bluffs. On a completely unrelated note, I think Samantha should be on my team. You know, girls vs. boys. Any objections? Perfect. Samantha, come sit by me." With an indulging grin, Sam scooted her chair over to Vala's side of the table-chair and the game was on.

After several rounds (and several more wins for the ladies), Daniel, bored as the unofficial referee, brought up a question he'd seen steadily creeping back into the eyes of his friends after the initial giddiness of the reunion.

"Have you guys given any more thought to what you want to do?"

Cam and Sam looked at each other from across the middle chair and seemed to have an entire conversation the rest weren't privvy to in the span of ten seconds.

"We had." Sam finally announced. "But we thought we should be talking about it with the whole team."

"Talking about what?" Vala inquired enthusiastically, the urge to be in the loop too great to stay quiet.

"About whether or not we want to attempt to rebuild the temporal device." Cameron informed her and Teal'c. To his credit, his voice didn't hint to his bias at all.

For the next few hours, the chips forgotten, dinner coming and going, their lids getting heavier along with their hearts, the issue was debated  _ad nauseam_  until the whole of SG-1 reached a unanimous decision.


	9. Epilogue

Daniel ducked and rolled to safety as he was repeatedly targeted by enemy fire. Cam, Sam and Teal'c were nowhere to be found and he couldn't hold off the enemy indefinitely. He was down to his last reserves, completely exhausted, done with, done  _for._ None of them could have seen this coming, it was night and day, heaven and hell...this was the hell part, definitely.

"Holy mother-Jackson??" Mitchell!

"Mitchell, do something!" He yelled over the enemy's firing. Instead of sudden relief, he felt a large body colliding into his.

"Are you on corn?" Cam glared at him. "I am not getting in the middle of that." Daniel swore and tried to peer over the edge to see their status when a new weapon was launched into the mix.

"What the hell is that?" Cam asked, his head tilting to the side as the object landed at his feet.

"I think it's part of the centerpiece." Daniel said, poking the thing to confirm its benign nature.

" _That_ 's part of your centerpiece?" His teammate replied incredulously, throwing the offending object to the side.

"She was in an arts and crafts phase a few months ago when she started  _nesting_  and now she's too sentimental to throw anything away." Daniel sighed, leaning against the back of the sofa. "Watch out for your place settings by the way, they're unfathomably sharp."

"Noted, thanks." Cam said, his face conveying just how very disturbed he was as a head of lettuce flew over their heads and exploded on the far wall. "She's got an arm on her."

"She does, she does." Daniel replied, staring into space, his eyebrows raised high.

"So...this, to you, is a better option than joining full-time with the Jaffa Rebellion against a horde of snake-heads... Explain that to me?" Cam posed sardonically as he watched his friend sigh and rub his face with both hands.

"Well, there's only a small chance of my dying in this house...in the beginning anyway. Also, it's due in barely a few weeks and she's made it quite clear that if I'm not there during delivery for her to cuss me out, she'll find me and kill me anyway." Daniel explained, his head bobbing.

"Ah ha." Mitchell said, grinning knowingly. For a moment the chaos got quiet and Drey'auc could be hear talking to Vala in very soothing tones, hopefully calming the irate woman down. "Got any names yet?" Mitchell continued before the tell-tale sound of a certain dinner piece being thrown and penetrating the adjacent wall caught them off-guard.

"That is a  _knife_ , Jackson. What did you  _do_ to her?" Cam asked, mildly panicked.

"What did _I_  do??  _She's_ the one being irrational!  _She's_  the one throwing cutlery!" Daniel replied heatedly, completely affronted until what sounded like a metal pan barreled into the sofa and sprung back onto the floor.

"Jackson!"

"Alright! She mentioned not liking her choices in clothes this morning and I may said -  _completely innocently_  - that it was a shame that I...um...wouldn't get to see her in her leather outfits like in our timeline." Daniel admitted quickly. "That  _she_  took that to mean she'd gotten too big to ever fit into them again is COMPLETELY HER OWN INFERENCE!" He finished yelling in the direction of the kitchen. A string of curses came back and he rolled his eyes. "I DO UNDERSTAND GOA'ULD, YOU KNOW!"

"Do  _not_ provoke her more!" Cameron smacked him in the arm. "That's it? That caused all this?"

"Well, not exactly," Daniel continued awkwardly, "I may have said that she never used to be so irrational, to which she replied I never knew her before and that if she wasn't what I wanted I should have built the damn machine and gone back to  _her_."

"Please, God, tell me you told her that was totally not what you wanted." Cam pled, his stomach clenching in fear when his friend looked down. "Jackson!"

"I said if I'd known what a horror show we'd turn out to be I would have sacrificed the decade trying to rebuild it." Daniel confessed morosely.

"Jackson!" Cam was appalled, his face twisted in incredulity.

"I know! I didn't mean a word of it, obviously!" Daniel yelled back, his eyes distraught. "But I haven't slept in over a week! She's never comfortable, she's always on me and she's got hot flashes hotter than Sokar. She has cravings I have to tend to at every single hour and god forbid it passes without her having been satisfied! I'm going out of my mind, Cam!" Daniel lowered his face into his hands and breathed deeply. When all he heard from his friend was rustling material, he glanced over to find his  _former_  best friend trying to get his white tank top off.

"What are you doing?" Daniel glared at him, his eyes conveying the threat should Cam carry on with his plan.

"Look, I'm sorry, Jackson. You drop us in front of the Goa'uld, the Replicators, in front of the entire damn Ori army and I have your back unconditionally, I will take a bullet for you without a question. But if Sam gets here and finds out what happened and sees that I took your side? Uh uh, no way." Cam said, fisting his freed tank top and waving it into the air as a makeshift surrender flag. "Vala! Jackson told me everything and he's an idiot! I'm coming out! Don't shoot!"

"Cam!" Daniel whispered harshly, trying to hold his friend back. "Cameron!" With a grumble in his throat, Daniel pursed his lips and sat back against the sofa. He would be here for a while.

When Sam and Teal'c finally arrived from their meeting with the Jaffa resistance an hour or so later, it was to the scene of massive cleaning. A very pregnant Vala came to give them warm hugs and kisses and then promptly gave them both cloths to pitch in.

"What happened here?" Sam whispered to Cam as she busied herself with an imaginary spot on the table. He didn't reply beyond shaking his head and giving her a look that said he'd debrief her when the slightly-more-hormonal-than-average woman wasn't within earshot.

A sense of uneasiness settled deep inside her and, refusing to be kept out of the loop when it concerned her closest friend, she began to take stock of the environment. Vala, after her cheerful greetings, seemed to have fallen into a slum of sorts and a smile would have seemed foreign on her lips. Drey'auc, whom they'd hastily grabbed from Chulak with Rya'c and Brayt'ac before all hell really broke loose between the Goa'uld and the rest of the galaxy, seemed perplexingly amused despite the chaos as she kept preparing food for supper. Teal'c slowly made his way to that side of the kitchen to greet his wife properly and to inform her that their son and friend would be late. It was a necessary evil but staggering entrances and departures was one of the many ways the Rebellion members managed to keep their secret.

Aside from the occupants in the room - of whom there was one notable exception - the place itself was a mess of bits of food, glass, ceramics and...was that a scorch burn on the doorframe? It looked like the place had been ransacked and if not for Drey'auc's cheer she'd be worried that Daniel had been abducted after a fierce struggle. Although...when she let her eyes wander to the next room, the splatter patterns on the far wall would suggest exactly where her missing friend was to be found and she had to stifle the sudden onset of laughter and smug pride. After all, she  _had_  been the first to point out that Daniel and Vala living together, in confined quarters, not part of the bulk of the Rebellion action, would be a recipe for relentless catastrophes. She was positive that the only reason she hadn't walked into this very disaster before was because of Drey'auc's calming influence. Apparently, that had a limit.

Armed with a better understanding of what might have gone down, Sam dropped her cloth and made her way over to Vala, who'd taken to violently obliterating carrots and the wooden chopping board underneath them. With a gentle hand to steady her friend's madness, she disarmed Vala and was ready with open arms when her face crumpled and tears welled in her eyes. Subtly, the other people filed out of the kitchen, the men a touch more quickly than the woman.

"He's right." Vala sniffed, trying with all her might to get herself under control. "I never used to be like this."

"You never used to be pregnant." Sam pointed out gently, guiding her to a chair. The trio from the original timeline had agreed that certain parts of the original timeline could be...forgotten. Amongst those were Vala being burned alive and being impregnated against her will to deliver the Ori spawn.

"Ugh." Vala derided. "I never wanted to be one of those women: barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, blaming their insanity on hormones." Sam said nothing but when Vala looked down to notice she had no footwear or socks on, the tears came back to coat her lash line. "I couldn't put them on myself because of my stomach and that endlessly useless idiot, wasn't around."

Resisting the urge to laugh, Sam just patted her friend's hand.

"I think it's completely justifiable for you to be feeling a little more emotional than usual." She declared, silencing Vala before she protested. "No, listen. For one, yes, you  _are_  pregnant and you're facing being a mother to a child for the first time in your life. Second, you are stuck here while we're out there fighting and things have been heating up lately. You never know who could not be coming home for the holidays."

"That's true." Vala nodded readily, biting her lip. "I do worry." Completely a falsehood - she had every faith in their abilities and their devotion to keeping each other safe - but she was willing to latch onto something that made her seem less of a senseless wreck.

"See? You're not irrational at all. This is a completely rational reaction to external pressures and stresses. You'd have to be inhuman to react any differently." Sam concluded, succeeding in pacifying her hormonal wreck of a best friend.

"And it can't be any easier with the thought that I have doubts about us." A voice full of shame added from the doorway. Seeing Daniel half-hiding behind the wall, Sam quietly got up, squeezed Vala's hand and left to find the others to get the real story behind all this.

Daniel stepped slowly into the room and was about to take the chair Sam had been sitting in when the lovely mother of his child kicked it into the table and put her feet up on it. As if she feared she wasn't communicating her feelings loudly enough, she also crossed her arms and looked away.

"Vala..." Daniel paused, reconciling with the fact that he'd screwed up in a major way and would have to grovel big this time. Holding in his sigh, he lowered himself to his knees beside her chair, earning himself a fraction of a glance. "I am so sorry I said what I did." He whispered, his heart lifting when she allowed him to take her hand but crashing again when it remained limp in his.

"Vala, this is ridiculous." He was trying not to sound admonishing, really he was. "You've thrown things, I am more sorry than you could possibly know. Please, just forget everything I said."

"What does it matter that you said it? You simply voiced what I've had in my mind since you found me over a year ago." She said in a monotone voice, her eyes staring into nothingness.

"What?" Daniel said incredulously, his voice still gentle. With his other hand, he curled her fingers around his and held them tight. "Vala, how could you think that? That I don't want to be exactly where I am? I was the one fighting for us to stay here against everyone - Cam, Sam, the entire Tok'ra race."

" ' _How_?' " Vala parroted, her brows coming together. "Daniel, you barely knew me when you decided to stay. You barely know me  _now_." She said, her voice anguished but soft. "You fell in love with the Vala Mal Doran of your time and you didn't want to let her go. I understood that, even back then, but I was so desperate to feel safe, to feel loved again that I didn't care. ...I care now."

"Vala," he breathed, feeling as though he'd been shot in the chest. "I...I guess we  _don't_  know each other like we should."

Vala's chest hiccuped silently and she tried to pull her hand out of his but he wouldn't let her go.

"If you knew me like you should, you'd know that I would  _never_  have made a life with you here, I never would have told you that I love you, I certainly  _never_  would have made a child with you, Vala, if I wasn't completely in love with you. Never." Daniel proclaimed heatedly. "And if I knew you like I should, I wouldn't have spent the past year and a half completely ignorant to how you've been feeling. And I am so sorry for that, too."

A tear slipped down her cheek and she went to scrub it away but he beat her to it, gently using the pad of his thumb to absorb the bead of salty water, and lingering on the soft skin under it.

"To be perfectly honest, I did have feelings for the Vala of the other timeline." Daniel said, hating that it caused her eyes to close firmly, the pressure releasing another tear. He was ready to catch it. "But I didn't know  _her_  at all. For two years I worked with her, rebuking every advance she made, making almost no effort to know the real her, and realizing entirely too late what I felt."

"And I'm the consolation prize." She whispered bitterly.

"No!" He protested vehemently, shaking his head and her hand strongly, trying to find a way to express himself properly. "The only true things that I could love about her were the only things I allowed myself to see, only barely what was on the surface. These lips that smile at me so bewitchingly." He traced the edge of her bottom lip with the same thumb that had caught her sorrow, causing her to swallow heavily. "These eyes that change colour with your every mood - that part I never noticed on her." He traced her cheekbone. "The effortless way she could rile me up, which you proved you could do the second or third day we'd known each other." The corner of her mouth barely twitched and his thumb moved down to encourage it.

"But that was all I ever got to know of her, Vala, and what killed me when we were thrown into this timeline is that I knew I'd missed out on so so much because I'd been scared. When we were able to finally get you back, I was still scared but there was no way in hell I was going to miss out on the chance to know you, to love you, ever again. That's why I needed to be with you, yes, but it's no reason for why I  _stayed_  with you." He pointed out, a loving smile on his face. "It's  _your_  quirks I find adorable and sometimes infuriating. It's  _your_ trusting me with yourself, your past, your secrets that makes me feel so...honoured. It's  _you_ who showed me what it meant to give yourself wholly to someone again.  _You_  are the one I fell in love with, Vala, no one else."

A tremulous joy tugged Vala's lips higher and higher despite the falling tears and when Daniel tugged gently on her hand, she willingly went into his arms and held onto his as tightly as she could.

"I'm not going anywhere." He whispered into her hair as she burrowed her face into the crook of his neck.

"Promise me."

"If they gave me a ready-build time travel device tomorrow, I would not only refused it but I would zat them and blow it up." He vowed, to her and to himself. "This is where I belong now, and no one is taking this, taking you, taking us, away from me."

Finding herself unable to quite form words without her hormones getting the best of her, Vala opted instead to allow his lips to gratefully capture hers to make official their return to normalcy.

oooooooooooooooooo

"That was nice." Cam nodded approvingly in the direction of the other outcasts. They hadn't gone far when they'd left the kitchen, they'd simply passed through the doorway and settled on the floor on either side of it, out of view.

"It was a long time coming." Drey'auc commented, her fingers laced with her husband's. There was an overwhelming lack of one-word agreement coming from a certain Jaffa and everyone could feel its absence.

"Come on, buddy, we know you want to say it." Cam told Teal'c, whom they suspected wasn't really kel'no'reeming like he said he would instead of eavesdropping.

"Please, he's been keeping it for for the past quarter hour, you think he's gonna give up his cover now?" Sam grinned, looking over at their silent friend on the other side of the door frame.

"It's pretty quiet..." Cam strained his hearing but couldn't catch anything.

"I believe they are making up." Drey'auc said with a secretive smile.

"Making out, more like it." Sam added, just in case Cam wasn't bothered enough. His disgruntled sigh and restless shifting told her that he was.

"Yo!" He yelled into the air, ignoring Sam's attempts to silence him. "You lovebirds mind wrapping this up? I have issues with you two getting it on where we make food."

There was a heavy silence as they listened for a reply.

"If you think this is disturbing, Cameron, I won't tell you what went on in your room last week when you were on a mission." Vala's voice came back with mock-innocent sing-song tones.

"Ugh, come  _on_." Cam moaned, his face distorting with disgust as the others (including the suddenly conscious Teal'c) got up from their hiding place to rejoin their friends. "That is just sick."

Now rejuvenated with the reconnection of their friends, the gang made quick work of cleaning up the rest of the kitchen and living room, and before long, the supper was ready and Bra'tac and Rya'c had arrived. The latest of their too-few family gatherings was well on its way and, as it often did as of late, the conversation shifted to the soon-to-be newest addition.

"I just thought I should mention that, in Earth culture, 'Sam' is a great name for either a boy or a girl." Sam added ever-so-subtly as she passed Vala the bread basket.

"Are you serious? That's nothing but a nickname." Cameron scoffed from his place beside Daniel. "Now you take 'Cameron', that is a full name. It's robust enough for a guy but edgy and unique enough for a girl."

"Noted, thank you." Vala replied dryly.

"Teal'c is also an appropriate unisex name." Their large friend intoned serenely, his hands folded together expectantly.

"Really? For a girl?" Sam asked skeptically.

"Sure, why not?" Cam muttered. "It'd make a great stripper name..."

Before their burly friend could inquire as to what exactly a "stripper" was, Daniel jumped back into the fray.

"We were actually thinking of something along the lines of Logan for a boy and maybe Elana for a girl." He announced, bullshitting on the spot. Still, the table seemed to consider the possibilities.

"As long as you don't call her Adria." Cam put out before stilling and catching Daniel and Sam's wide eyes. All three tried to subtly look at Vala to catch her reaction but she hadn't missed a beat in the production known as meal-time to a pregnant woman.

"You know, it's funny you should say that." She said, taking a bite of her dinner roll. "I had a stepmother called Adria, horrible woman. I would never do that to my daughter."

And with that near-miss, the trio from the original timeline shared a reassured look and returned to their meals.

They had adjusted to this new life, and to these old and yet new friends. Cam had his thrill-seeking adventures as one of the head strategists and leaders of the Rebellion, Sam was over the moon with her various projects to build the latest (new) technology to get the upper hand on the enemy, and Daniel had his work cut out for him as occasional intergalactic mediator and full-time father-to-be to what was sure to be a little hellion. As for Teal'c, he was finally on the way to providing his people with the freedom they'd been promised and denied, and Vala...Vala had been the most surprising to them all. She played a pivotal role in supplying information and strategies to the movement due to her experience as a host but, perhaps due to those very same reasons, she'd been just as eager if not more so to adapt to a  _certain_  degree of domesticity.

This galaxy was not quite their own but this was their family. No matter what timeline, time period, or parallel universe they were in, this was their home.

* * *

The end!


End file.
